February 4, 2022

Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman

Harvard Book Store's virtual event series welcomes award-winning researcher, entrepreneur, and editor ANNA GIFTY OPOKU-AGYEMAN for a discussion of her anthology The Black Agenda: Bold Solutions for a Broken System. She will be joined in conversation by FRANKLIN LEONARD, founder and CEO of Black List.

Details

From ongoing reports of police brutality to the disproportionate impact COVID-19 has had on Black Americans, 2020 brought a renewed awareness to the deep-rootedness of racism and white supremacy in every facet of American life.

Edited by Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, The Black Agenda is the first book of its kind—a bold and urgent move towards social justice through a profound collection of essays featuring Black scholars and experts across economics, education, health, climate, and technology. It speaks to the question "What's next for America?" on the subjects of policy-making, mental health, artificial intelligence, climate movement, the future of work, the LGBTQ community, the criminal legal system, and much more.

Essayists including Dr. Sandy Darity, Dr. Hedwig Lee, Mary Heglar, and Janelle Jones present groundbreaking ideas ranging from Black maternal and infant health to reparations to AI bias to inclusive economic policy, with the potential to uplift and heal not only Black America, but the entire country.

About Author(s)

Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman is an award-winning researcher, entrepreneur, and author hailing from Ghana and Maryland. Currently, she is a graduate student at Harvard Kennedy School studying public policy. She is the co-founder of The Sadie Collective, the only non-profit organization addressing the underrepresentation of Black women in economics, finance, and policy, as well as the co-founder of the viral and award-winning digital campaign #BlackBirdersWeek. Her advocacy, research, and commentary lie at the intersection of social justice and quantitative analysis and are featured widely by media outlets such as BloombergNPRTeen VogueSlate, and the New York Times.

Franklin Leonard is a film and television producer, cultural commentator, and entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of the Black List, the company that celebrates and supports great screenwriting and the writers who do it via film production, its annual survey of best unproduced screenplays, online marketplace, live staged script readings, screenwriter labs, and film culture publications. He’s been one of Deadline.com Hollywood Disruptor, Hollywood Reporter’s 35 Under 35, Black Enterprise magazine’s “40 Emerging Leaders for Our Future,” and Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business.&rdquo