Kevin Powell Speaking Topics

• Dreaming America: Barack, Pop Culture & the New Activism

• Let's Get It Started: Redefining American Manhood

  Powell would speak for about 45 minutes on his lifelong battles with sexism, dating to his years as a boy, as an adolescent and teen athlete, as a male very influenced by popular culture and street culture. Powell talks very candidly about the maturation of his sexist behavior in college, culminating with his pulling a knife on a fellow student.

  His speech is not simply about discussing the problems, but also offering practical, proactive solutions to get males to rethink how we have defined manhood our entire lives, often at the physical, spiritual, and emotional expense of women. Indeed, he will talk very honestly about his periods of deep denial, about his counseling sessions, about the challenges he was given by women, about the books he began to read, and how all those things began to broaden my thinking and, in a sense, push him toward healing (an ongoing thing), consistent self-reflection, and, finally, the recognition that he had an obligation to speak out against any sexist behavior, whatever form.

From Rosa Parks to Hurricane Katrina: Civil Rights in America

Kevin Powell, one of the leading voices in America today, not only pays homage to the Civil Rights Movement, which greatly benefited his generation, the hip-hop generation, but he also traces the historical connections between the Civil Rights era and the hip-hop era. From Emmett Till's murder to Hurricane Katrina, from dr. King's Poor People's Campaign to the birth of hip-hop in the late 1960s/early 1970s, Powell tackles the tough questions of what was won and what was lost as a result of the Civil Rights Movement, why there has been vast class and generational gaps in Black America since the Civil Rights era, and what Hurricane Katrina brought to the surface as we watched it unfold on television, as many of us watched the Civil Rights struggles on television. Moreover, because Powell has been a central figure in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, including trips, himself, to New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Houston in the days immediately following the hurricane and flooding, he offers firsthand accounts and personal insights to what went wrong, how what went wrong falls into the ongoing struggles for Civil Rights, and why Mrs. Rosa Park's recent death is a reminder of the work ahead.

How to Build Corporate Responsibility & Trust in the 21st Century

Kevin Powell has consulted and worked with a number of major corporate brands through the years, including Coca-Cola, Best Buy, Nike, VirginMobile, Clear Channel Communications, Nissan, Microsoft, and Random House. In this keynote presentation, Powell details moments in American history of corporate generosity; highlights some of the issues and crises affecting the American social fabric in these early days of the 21st century; and offers a concrete and multidimensional game plan for corporate involvement in the community, including ways a corporate entity can boost brand awareness or repair their brand image in the aftermath of not so positive media attention while giving back.

The Leadership We Are Waiting for Is Us: How to Become an Effective Leader

Powell feels he has been a leader his entire adult life, practically from the moment he set foot on the campus of Rutgers University in the mid 1980s as a teenager. Inspired by the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson and the anti-apartheid movement filtering through colleges nationwide, Powell threw himself into the role of student and youth leader on campus and off. Over time those early experiences have been translated into very visible and influential careers at MTV and Quincy Jones' Vibe magazine, as one of the most prominent voices of the hip-hop generation, and in New York City as a very active and well-respected community leader, trendsetter, business owner, and mover and shaker. Most recently Powell ran for Congress in Brooklyn, New York, and plans to seek elected office again in the near future. Indeed, Powell's varied experiences in academia, media, corporate America, politics, and the arts and entertainment worlds have afforded him the unique opportunity to develop a comprehensive action plan for leadership and leadership development in corporate America. This simple and accessible approach to leadership development includes a step-by-step guide on how individuals can identify their inner leadership qualities and skills, and how best to highlight those qualities and skills for the good of themselves and their company.

Are Dr. King & His “Dream” Still Relevant?: Community, Social Media, & the New Activism

In this thought-provoking and interactive lecture Kevin Powell, one of America’s most engaging political, community, literary, and cultural leaders and voices, takes the audience on a journey from Dr. King to Ferguson, Missouri, from civil rights to hiphop, from race and power to gender, class and all the many ways we are different, and the same. Drawing on his own personal experiences as a product of post-Civil Rights America, Kevin discusses his family’s history in the Jim Crow South, his childhood as a product of integrated schools, and how and why Dr. King’s life and work became relevant to him—and why it was not for several years. Connecting the dots between elders and young people, Kevin also dives into the tricky terrain of twitter, Facebook, and other social media as the spaces of the new activism, and why we should be paying attention to these new tools for change in the 21st century.