NEW ORLEANS — The 2023 Essence Festival of Culture kicked off with a bang on June 29. The premier event of Day 1 was the Global Black Economic Forum which featured panels that included Vice President Kamala Harris, hip-hop legend Doug E. Fresh, Essence CEO Caroline A. Wanga, Bank of America Foundation president Ebony Thomas, Sony Music EVP Andrew Davis and others.
Vice President Kamala Harris expressed her disappointment with the supreme court’s decision on affirmative action and she he encouraged everyone to read the dissenting decision of Ketanji Brown Jackson. She [Jackson] is a beautiful writer who is compelled by logic, knowledge of history, and clarity of thinking about where we have been as a country and where we have the potential to go. Vice President Harris went on to say “this is a moment when the court has yet to fully understand the importance of equal opportunity for our country’s people. This is not color blind. This is being blind to history, blind to data, blind to disparities, and blind to the strength that diversity brings to classrooms and boardrooms. We have so much work to do.”
Caroline Wagna, Essence’s executive officer (CEO), made the room a little uncomfortable as she expressed that we stop spending our money with businesses that will do nothing for us or our community. She said that her desire was not to be in corporate America, but she only got into corporate America to feed her daughter. She now feels she is in a position where she can do for her community unapologetically. 
Doug E. Fresh at Global Black Economic Forum (Photo by Nagashia Jackson for rolling out)Andrew Davis, the EVP & global chief people experience officer of Sony Music, D-Nice, and Doug E. Fresh, touched on the importance of generational wealth in the music industry. IOne of the important ways it starts is with Artists owning their masters and publishing rights. Doug E. Fresh stated that he was the first hip-hop artist to own his masters and publishing rights. Either you own your masters, or the master owns you.
