Combs Global’s Post

Sean Combs made an appearance at Howard University's annual Yardfest homecoming event where he publicly handed over a generous seven figure cheque the university’s president, Dr. Ben Vinson III. As a proud alumnus, Diddy’s visit to the university was not just about a financial contribution but rather reaffirming an unwavering commitment the music mogul once made regarding preserving the HBCUs.

When Deon Graham sat down for dinner at the home of rapper-entrepreneur Sean Combs around 2018, he took a chance and spoke frankly about the need to support talent beyond the music industry. That intimidating conversation with his idols — Combs, who was also his boss at Combs Global, and music exec Andre Harrell, who died two years later — has evolved into this weekend’s REVOLT WORLD, a massive event in Atlanta focused on all things hip-hop. Hosted by Combs’ Black-focused multi-platform media company called REVOLT, the three-day event is designed to empower innovators and professionals across the music, lifestyle, tech, culture, gaming and sports industries. “When I would go to Revolt Music Conference beginning in 2014, people would hand me their mixtape, but I had nothing to do with music and couldn’t help them,” said Graham, who has worked his way up to chief brand officer at Combs Global. “From there, it was about trying to find a way to broaden this beyond music because the culture has evolved into all of these different things.”

If you want to get to the studio at Sean Combs’s house, pass the purple Anish Kapoor sculpture, then saunter into the living room, stopping to marvel at Kerry James Marshall’s “Past Times,” a startling painting reckoning with Blackness, wealth and leisure that Combs bought at auction in 2018 for $21.1 million. Next, glide through a conspicuously undisturbed dining room, where Jeanneret chairs are lined up like sentries on either side of a long table, step out into the backyard and head left, past the generous pool, into one of the secondary structures on the property. Upstairs there one Tuesday afternoon last month, Combs was pacing a tasteful, lounge-like room and chatting on speakerphone to Funkflex, the longstanding master of ceremonies for New York’s Hot 97 radio station, spreading the good word about his return to music.

An impactful CMO is an advocate for their team and proves to be indispensable to the CEO. These 24 marketing heads, the inaugural class of the Adweek Marketing Vanguard Awards, are exceeding the standard of effective marketing leadership paving the way for the next generation of marketing leaders. Congratulations Deon Graham #marketing #advertising #branding

Sean Combs is doing his part for Black-founded financial literacy platform “Earn Your Leisure” and Jackson State University to continue to build upon their legacies of forging paths to wealth and higher education.