After successful runs with BET Networks, Simons Latham Television, Inspiration Network and Fox Sports, the tag team of John Pasmore and Erskine Faush are launching experiential learning eMagine Labs with HBCU students and Black C-suite executives with a focus to “see who they can be” on demand productions with rolling out. Live events and original productions will inform and entertain with candid conversations providing campus and boardroom insights.
Faush launched the THE YARD platform with founding partner Vulcan Materials Company and has awarded over $500K in pitch competition scholarships and innovation infrastructure grants to six HBCUs in the past three years. THE YARD has also installed two Dream Space tech environments at Alabama A&M and Tennessee State Universities with a third planned for Texas Southern this year. The competitions and leadership talks are designed to create a classroom to boardroom pipeline of internships and career placements.
The think tank roundtable with the then-president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Steven Benjamin, to address infrastructure, inclusion and innovation, resulted in an intentional focus on HBCUs for companies to not only recognize and hire untapped HBCU tech, talent, and culture but to also invest.
Both Pasmore and Faush’s experience includes senior leadership positions with national media, public and private partnerships, community, and economic development. Their combined efforts seek to disrupt the historical revenue model and drive a diversified portfolio of multiple, sustainable revenue streams resulting in systemic change, increased recruitment and retention through shared services and forward-facing revenue collaboration.
EMagine Labs is a convener of thought leadership, practitioners, and policy makers to address inequities and align systemic change of the HBCU ecosystem with data driven, evidence-based focus groups, learned behaviors and best practice models to recommend practices and policy for the new HBCU economy. Mayor Hardie Davis of Augusta will host the first eMagine Lab during the Master’s with HBCU stakeholders focused on filling the disparity gap in the business of sports by recruiting, mentoring and placing HBCU students on the leadership ladder in all major sports especially those still struggling with engagements like the PGA.
The Accelerator is hosted by The YARD with founding partner Vulcan Materials Company dedicated to driving the new HBCU economy.
