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From Waitress To Exec: Paramount’s DeDe Brown Talks Power Moves And The Self-Work That Wins
It’s always great to be able to see power in motion, and the more we see this, the more we can embody it in our own lives. Black women executives in entertainment oftentimes showcase this in more ways than one—leveling up while innovating, day by day, a single step at a time.
In the case of DeDe Brown, senior vice president of multicultural marketing and publicity at Paramount Pictures, you've got a living-and-breathing lesson in how to succeed in the entertainment industry. She is a powerful woman who’s using her role as an executive to not only push her own boundaries, but to also apply leadership for change.
She balances duties of overseeing campaigns for some of the entertainment powerhouse’s most successful projects and franchises (think, Jackass, Scream, Sonic, and The Lost City) with co-leading the steering committee of Paramount’s Project Action initiative, an effort driven by the global marketing and distribution team’s advocacy of social justice for Black and brown people around the world.
Add to that her role as the co-host of Blk on the Scene, a podcast that brings the contributions of Black creatives in the entertainment industry to the forefront and does its part to change the narrative on authentic representation.
And check a few more notches on her resume: her work in strategic leadership and boss moves are evident in her work with blockbuster films including Bad Boys for Life, Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters and TV hits like The Neighborhood, South Side, and God Friended Me. Before that, she served as a freelance consultant in fashion, sports, and media and was even the director of special events and PR at the New York Post.
Her early career path was one of twists and turns—an adventurous dance with a trio of chance, smarts, and fortitude. xoNecole caught up with the busy executive to talk about how she landed into her current role and the importance of recognizing that one’s path to success doesn’t always have to resemble anything close to cookie-cutter.
Early Days of Powerful Pivoting
The University of Alabama grad studied broadcast journalism only to graduate and decide that the career path just wasn’t what she really wanted to do at the time. “I’ve always had this interest in entertainment, and so [it was about] just not knowing what to do when I got out of school,” she recalls.
“I was thinking about starting in small markets, covering the cat stuck in the tree or a house fire, but I couldn’t look into my magic ball and realize how quickly the world was going to change with social media. I also didn’t have any mentorship or any sort of plan or path of, ‘Oh I should figure out this whole entertainment thing.’ It took like three or four years for me to really find my way.”
Brown took on jobs like waitressing and working in retail, and it was while waiting tables at a popular eatery that her life and perspective would change. At the time, there was a new themed dining experience called Planet Hollywood, a chain that would become legendary for its celebrity-connected events and marketing, and a friend recommended that she apply for a job there. (The founder, Robert Earl, is infamous for the success he had with the Hard Rock Cafe, and early investors and partners include Hollywood heavyweights like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, and Sylvester Stallone.)
“I had to get myself together and I just started inquiring about other things I could do. That led to me becoming the executive assistant to the PR manager and the general manager of the restaurant. This was pre-internet and social [media], [and] it was the only way people in regional markets were getting access to celebrities and talent in that whole experience. It was a wonderful introduction to the world of PR and entertainment but also [to] community relations and events. I got a really immersive and hands-on experience.”
She likes to cite "serendipity" as a major influence on the ebb and flow of her career in entertainment, but humility is also a major component, especially considering that she went from serving food to eager customers to serving big-budget campaigns and life-changing opportunities for creatives of color in Hollywood. “I do think there is some benefit to not having a plan in some way because then you’re able to take advantage of opportunities that may present themselves that were unexpected. I also presented a willingness to learn, to be a sponge, and to be super-nimble,” she adds.
Building Impact and Flourishing
As an executive, she’s a huge fan of not only “tooting your own” horn in your career, especially "as Black and brown women,” she says, but diving into personal and professional development in order to get to know your strengths and skills you could improve on.
“I was freelancing and consulting for seven years, with some success—I worked on Fashion Week and various sporting events—but I was culling it all together again without much of a plan. I learned a lot, but it was when I realized, ‘Okay, I’ve got my focus on so many different things during this freelance period, how can I narrow my focus to have more impact, a better salary, and where’s that going to take me in the next 10 years?’ That’s when I really began to hyperfocus on multicultural marketing and publicity, knowing that it was something I loved."
"I had a bit of an intro to it working in 2014 on the Get On Up campaign with Universal Pictures, and I always had in the back of my mind, again, that I loved being at the service of amplifying Black and brown voices. The more entrenched I became in multicultural publicity and marketing, the more I realized, wow, I am having an impact, I can have an impact, and how do I amplify that impact?”
Today, both in her VP role as well as her work as part of the Project Action team, whose in-action efforts include Paramount Made (an executive mentorship program that has reportedly facilitated cross-department promotions for junior staffers, the prioritizing POC-owned businesses for vendor opportunities, and the formulation of an equitable talent and intern recruiting unit), she’s able to truly tap into merging passion with profession.
“In a lot of the personal and professional development work I’ve done, I’ve realized that first I have to show up as a human being who cares about people and cares about embracing people,” she says. “The goal for me is collaboration and using our expertise, our passions, our intersectionality to come together for a common goal.”
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Featured image courtesy of DeDe Brown
This Black Woman-Owned Creative Agency Shows Us The Art Of Rebranding
Rebranding is an intricate process and very important to the success of businesses that want to change. However, before a business owner makes this decision, they should determine whether it's a rebrand or an evolution.
That's where people like Lola Adewuya come in. Lola is the founder and CEO of The Brand Doula, a brand development studio with a multidisciplinary approach to branding, social media, marketing, and design.
While an evolution is a natural progression that happens as businesses grow, a rebrand is a total change. Lola tells xoNecole, "A total rebrand is necessary when a business’s current reputation/what it’s known for is at odds with the business’s vision or direction.
"For example, if you’ve fundamentally changed what your product is and does, it’s likely that your brand is out of alignment with the business. Or, if you find your company is developing a reputation that doesn’t serve it, it might be time to pump the brakes and figure out what needs to change.
She continues, "Sometimes you’ll see companies (especially startups) announce a name change that comes with updated messaging, visuals, etc. That usually means their vision has changed or expanded, and their previous branding was too narrow/couldn’t encompass everything they planned to do."
Feature image courtesy
The Brand Doula was born in 2019, and its focus is on putting "the experiences, goals, and needs of women of color founders first," as well as brands with "culture-shifting missions."
According to Lola, culture-shifting is "the act of influencing dominant behavior, beliefs, or experiences in a community or group (ideally, for the better)."
"At The Brand Doula, we work with companies and leaders that set out to challenge the status quo in their industries and communities. They’re here to make an impact that sends ripples across the market," she says.
"We help the problem solvers of the world — the ones who aren't satisfied with 'this is how it's always been' and instead ask 'how could this be better?' Our clients build for impact, reimagining tools, systems, and ways of living to move cultures forward."
The Brand Doula has worked with many brands, including Too Collective, to assist with their collaboration with Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty and Balanced Black Girl for a "refresh," aka rebrand. For businesses looking to rebrand, Lola shares four essential steps.
1. Do an audit of your current brand experience — what’s still relevant and what needs to change? Reflect on why you’re doing the rebrand in the first place and what success would look like after relaunching.
2. Tackle the overall strategy first — before you start redesigning logos and websites, align on a new vision for your brand. How do you want your company to be positioned moving forward? Has your audience changed at all? Will your company have a fresh personality and voice?
3. Bring your audience along the journey — there’s no need to move in secret. Inviting your current audience into the journey can actually help them feel more connected to and invested in your story, enough to stick around as changes are being made.
4. Keep business moving — one of my biggest pet peeves is when companies take down their websites as soon as they have the idea to rebrand, then have a Coming Soon page up for months! You lose a lot of momentum and interest by doing that. If you’re still in business and generating income, continue to operate while you work on your rebrand behind the scenes. You don’t want to cut existing customers off out of the blue, and you also don’t want so much downtime that folks forget your business exists or start looking for other solutions.
While determining whether the rebrand was successful may take a few months, Lola says a clear sign that it is unsuccessful is negative feedback from your target audience. "Customers are typically more vocal about what they don’t like more than what they do like," she says.
But some good signs to look out for are improvements in engagement with your marketing, positive reviews, press and increase in retention, and overall feeling aligned with the new branding.
For more information about Lola and The Brand Doula, visit her website, thebranddoula.com.
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If you’ve never heard of the word “anorgasmia” before, it’s the technical term that is used for women who have trouble achieving an orgasm. Actually, if we’re gonna get super technical about it, women who have infrequent ones (check out “Why Are My Orgasms So Damn Inconsistent?” and “Why Do Orgasms So Often Seem Like A ‘Hit-Or-Miss’ Experience For Women?”) or women who experience orgasms that oftentimes lack intensity can also fall under this category.
And although everything from age and hormonal imbalances to stress/anxiety and even low self-esteem can play a role in why climaxing can be difficult, after touring with an organization that dealt with porn and sex addiction for almost 10 years, having countless sessions with married women and also researching and writing on sex for over two decades at this point, what I realize hasn’t been discussed enough is that a lot of women can have orgasms — just not vaginal ones via intercourse (check out “Ladies, Please Stop Pressuring Yourself Over Vaginal Orgasms”).
The next thing that should be brought up more in the discourse is the fact that many women have orgasms — they’re just not always earth-shattering ones (like the ones that you feel when you have, say, a blended orgasm).
Today, we’re going to hone in on the latter point. If you know (that you know that you know) that you have orgasms yet the more intense ones don’t happen nearly as often as you would like, there is something that you can do that has been proven to help you out — and the title of this piece is a huge hint as far as what that is. #wink
How Does Weed Help to Create More and Better Orgasms?
Weed and sex being a cool combination is not something that I haven’t addressed before. A few years back, I penned a piece for the site entitled, “7 Proven Ways Weed Makes Sex So Much Better.” So, why did I feel the need to write this one too? Because I think all of us (who’ve had sex before) can vouch for the fact that you can have a wonderful sexual experience and still not have an orgasm or the kind of orgasm that you’d prefer to have. And when that is indeed the case, well, something that can help you out is yep, marijuana.
For starters, did you know that there are literal studies to support that weed can help women to have more frequent orgasms? Yep. One article that I read stated that out of almost 400 people surveyed, 52 percent said that they had trouble climaxing; however, after a bit of weed use, orgasm frequency increased by almost 73 percent, orgasm satisfaction by 67 percent, and the ability to have orgasms more easily increased by 71 percent.
And since some of these individuals deal with something known as female orgasmic disorder (FOD), because the findings are so significant, there are some states that are actually pushing for FOD to qualify for medical marijuana treatment. Yep, that’s how effective weed use is proving itself to be in this realm.
So, just what is it about weed that makes climaxing a more probable experience for so many of us? For one thing, weed is seen as an aphrodisiac by many individuals. One reason is that it contains properties that help to relax your system as well as intensify the sexual experiences that you have by literally helping to make them feel more pleasurable.
Some studies also reveal that weed use can lower your inhibitions and increase the amount of time you spend engaging in foreplay too. If you add to that the fact that weed also amplifies the sense of touch — well, I’m sure that you get how all of this combined can help you to have not just more but better quality orgasms, for sure.
How to Effectively Bring Weed into Your Sexual Experiences
So, now that you know all of this, I’m sure some of you are wondering how to bring marijuana into your boudoir in a responsibly effective kind of way. Good question. For one thing, it’s definitely best to start off in small amounts (if you’ve never experienced weed before); you can probably do this best with edibles because many of them are sold in pre-dosed amounts. In fact, although you might think that, when it comes to weed consumption, “the more the merrier,” the reality is actually that overdoing it could decrease your libido instead of elevate it.
Also, it’s a good idea to remember that while CBD is good for ointments and creams that can help to reduce anxiety before sex or enhance afterplay (check out “Sure, Your Foreplay Game Is On Point. Now What About The ‘Afterplay’?”), THC — the active ingredient that is responsible for getting you “high” — is what has a stronger reputation for making sex itself a more pleasurable experience; especially as far as women go. So, what you might want to do is start out with something like a chocolate edible (since it also is an aphrodisiac) with a low amount of THC in it along with a CBD-based lubricant.
Just make sure to keep in mind that edibles can bea bit unpredictable (as far as how high you will get and how soon along with how you will feel once you come down from the high experience), plus, their effects tend to last longer than smoking (edible highs can sometimes last six or more hours while smoking ones are around four or more) — so, if it’s your first time trying all of this out, a night before going to work isn’t a good idea; wait until the weekend instead.
On the other hand, if you’d consider yourself to be a bit of a “weed pro” at this point, you might want to experiment with some different strains of weed. Ones that are somewhat popular in the sexual stimuli department contain what is called limonene. It is actually a chemical that isfound in citrus fruit; however, when it’s combined with weed, not only can it help the weed to taste better, but it canelevate your mood, reduce your stress, andgive your libido and energy levels a bit of a boost as well.
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Listen, if there’s one thing that I’m gonna do, it’s provide a hack to make sex better for you — and there is just too much data out in these streets to not shout out weed as far as achieving quality orgasms go.
That said, if weed ain’t your thing, don’t force it to be just because you read this. There are other ways to have amazing orgasms (check out “15 Women Share Their Personal Hacks For Better Orgasms (And Sex Overall)”). Oh, but if it is (or if you’ve always been curious about it), why not approach cannabis from a strictly sexual angle? At the very least, you’ll get a bit of a euphoric feel. At the most, you’ll have an avenue to experience more of the orgasms that you crave.
Hell, sounds like a win/win to me, sis.
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Featured image by Peter Dazeley/Getty Images