DREAMLEAPERS® with Harriette Cole featuring Eric Easter

Eric Easter is a producer, writer and media executive and CEO of BlackBoxDigital Studios, which produces non-fiction multi-platform programming. The former CEO of streaming channel Black Heritage Network, he advises content-based media startups including streaming channel Kweli TV. A strong advocate for public media, he is the chairman of WHUT TV (Howard University Television) and a trustee of America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) and its lobbying arm, APTS Action. A former chairman of Black Public Media, he also served on the board of the Public Media Platform, a joint effort to build a global digital resource of public media content. The former chief digital officer for Johnson Publishing, he launched and served as founding editor-in-chief of EbonyJet.com (now Ebony.com). As head of its entertainment unit, he spearheaded the company’s push into documentaries, online radio and short-form video. The partnership he established with Google led to the digitization of the archives of Ebony, Jet, Negro Digest/Black World and Ebony Jr. Prior to joining JPC, he directed communications outreach for Washington Post Newsweek Interactive (washingtonpost.com, newsweek.com, Slate) and served as executive director of Lawyers for the Arts, where he worked with content and music creators to navigate the impact of digital technology on intellectual property. He founded and published the DC-based cultural magazine, ONE, and co-published the scholarly quarterly, Black Film Review. He is a creator and co-author of the bestselling book Songs of My People (Little Brown 1992), a historic book and international photo exhibition on the lives of African Americans. In collaboration with actor Edward James Olmos and journalist Manny Monterrey, he produced AMERICANOS: Latino Life in the United States (Little Brown, 1990), a book, exhibition and award-winning HBO documentary which launched HBO Latino. A political veteran, he served as a media advisor to the campaigns of Howard Dean, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Governor Doug Wilder (VA), and as press secretary to the Rev. Jesse Jackson for the National Rainbow Coalition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices