The creator economy is booming as millions of people around the world turn to social media to become influencers. Creators on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are now earning up to six figures annually through brand sponsorships, affiliate marketing, and other revenue streams.
As influencers build their brands, some of them have turned to influencer-management agencies to help them navigate the industry. These agencies help clients decide between different business opportunities, connect them with other creators and industry experts, and earn a consistent income. While some management firms and agencies have established broad client rosters, others are focused on specific criteria, like creators in the lifestyle category or those from diverse backgrounds.
Like any industry, the creator economy still has a long way to go in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). A December 2021 report conducted by public-relations network MSL Group and The Influencer League found a 29% racial pay gap between white and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) influencers, and that gap widened to 35% between white and Black influencers.
“Until we can bridge that gap and provide tools not only for BIPOC creators to succeed but also for BIPOC-led management agencies to thrive, we’ll continue to see and experience the inequities in the industry,” Brittany Bright, founder of The Influencer League told Insider. “You generally see slightly more equity in influencer pay when a creator reaches a certain follower tier and is able to secure a management team equipped to help them secure higher paying higher quality brand deals.”
One BIPOC-led agency supporting creators of underrepresented backgrounds was founded by New York City-based entrepreneur Julian Andrew. Before launching Talentiish in June, 31-year-old Andrew was a talent manager at Select Management Group where he focused on managing LGBTQ+ creators, like TikTok stars Ian Paget and Chris Olsen.
He founded his own talent-management agency after feeling that there was a lack of a dedicated space for LGBTQ+ and BIPOC creators.
“I wanted to create a home for those that fall under both communities, a home where upper management also reflects those communities that they are serving,” Andrew said.
Insider chose these power players based on reader nominations as well as reporting and conversations with industry professionals to highlight some of the top BIPOC-led influencer-management firms and agencies in the industry. Our list includes firms across the US, the UK, and Africa.
Here are 13 influencer-management agencies led by a person of color, listed in alphabetical order by company name:
Annelise Campbell, 29, founded in November 2019 Campbell Francis Group (CFG).
Campbell, the agency’s CEO and founder, works with Gen Z talent on TikTok and YouTube. The company’s roster is primarily focused on lifestyle and beauty creators.
Campbell’s background is in paid media, digital strategy, and influencer strategy on the agency side. Prior to founding CFG, she spearheaded the consumer-influencer program at a global PR firm. Her former clients include NARS, Magnum Ice Cream, Keurig, and Hyatt.
“There wasn’t a huge prioritization of diversity in the influencer space, which was a problem for me, especially as a Black woman,” she told Insider. “I felt that most brands were not seeing the value of diverse creators and the audiences they serve. It was really important for me to start an agency that could advocate for diverse and underrepresented creators but also educate brands on how to work with diverse creators in an intentional and equitable way.”
Campbell said she signed six creators to the company prior to its official launch, and that most of the creators came from word-of-mouth referrals because she was freelancing as a talent manager for a creator before starting the agency.
Talent includes: Monica Style Muse (420,000 YouTube subscribers) and Jaelan AKA Face Over Matter (132,000 Instagram followers)
Read more on Campbell: A 27-year-old digital marketer quit her job to start an influencer management firm. Here’s what she learned in her first year.
Before founding Clique-Now, Mylen Yamamoto Tansingco, 35, was a clinical professor of entrepreneurship and communication at California State University, Los Angeles.
While she was teaching, she would invite speakers — many of whom were digital creators — to talk to her class and she stayed in contact with many of them.
In 2012, she decided to launch a talent-management firm after noticing a gap in agencies focused on AAPI representation. Now, she serves as the CEO of Clique-Now.
Clique-Now represents more than 20 diverse creators across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. The firm is based in Los Angeles, and it currently has 8 employees. Early clients include David Choi, Justin Chon, Kevjumba, and The Fung Bros.
Talent includes: Leenda Dong (17 million TikTok followers), Sam Li (235,000 Instagram followers), The Fung Bros (2 million YouTube subscribers), Steven Lim (2 million YouTube subscribers), and FashionByAlly (967,000 YouTube subscribers)
Diversifi Talent is a full-service talent-management agency that was cofounded in March 2020 by Prasuna Cheruku.
The agency aims to bring diversity to the entertainment industry by working with underrepresented creators to secure access to opportunities like brand collaborations and media campaigns. In addition to creators, it also works with choreographers, dancers, models, and artists, who reach an audience of more than 80 million.
A graduate of Emerson College, 26-year-old Cheruku began thinking about starting her own agency while working for Madison Square Garden’s marketing team. At the time, she was in charge of TikTok strategy, including helping well-known TikTokers Charli and Dixie D’Amelio create content on the company’s social-media accounts. She noticed that more white creators were getting opportunities to work with brands like MSG and being paid for it, while BIPOC creators were rarely hired and were paid less. She decided to start her own agency to help creators of color land more brand deals and be paid what they were worth.
“I noticed the people who were growing were all white and all would have the mindset that they should do anything they can to get ahead, which was completely against all of my values,” the New Jersey-based founder told Insider. “It got me thinking how there must be so many young creators out there taken advantage of while they are doing the work of a marketing agency and providing results for the brands that are astronomical.”
Now, Cheruku manages more than 80 dance, lifestyle, and comedy creators, most of whom identify as Black, brown, or LGBTQ+.
Talent includes: Drew Jeezy (620,000 TikTok followers), Roman Parks (78,700 TikTok followers), and Aishu (740,000 TikTok followers)
Shannae Ingleton Smith, 41, founded in 2019 Kensington Grey Agency and now serves as its president and CEO.
Prior to launching Kensington Grey, she worked in media sales. She launched Kensington Grey with her husband and, at the time, the two of them were working out of their kitchen with a few influencers, including KarenBritChick, HighlowLuxxe, and Shaneice Crystal.
In March 2019, the firm was featured in Forbes Women, and by the following March the agency had hired its first full-time employee. Now the company has more than 20 full-time employees, and is actively looking to add more people to its team.
The firm aims to help creatives of color earn better pay, while also working to help brands tell their stories.
The agency is focused on working with Black creators, on every social platform, with an emphasis on lifestyle, parenting, fashion, and beauty.
The firm represents more than 50 creators. It’s currently based in Toronto, but the team often travels with clients to cities like New York, Dallas, Miami, and Los Angeles for events and meetings.
Talent includes: KarenBritChick (328,000 YouTube subscribers), HighlowLuxxe (332,000 Instagram followers), and Shaneice Crystal (596,000 YouTube subscribers)
Malc Agency was launched in 2020 by Mariam Sinminsola Abass, who was raised in Ibadan, Nigeria, completed higher education in the UK, and now lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria.
Before founding the company, she freelanced as a senior brand consultant and celebrity fashion stylist, and worked in digital and influencer marketing at the communications firm Tally.
During this time, she noticed that creators of color weren’t getting a lot of visibility in brand campaigns. She did some research about the pay gaps, and decided that she wanted to be a part of changing the industry.
“Studies showed they were underpaid and undervalued and I wanted to use my experience to help,” the 30-year-old said. “It became my drive to create more visibility for underrepresented groups.”
Abass launched the agency when she was still living in London, but she is now based in Nigeria. The company represents talent in the US, the UK, and Africa. To manage the business, Abass works with a team of three permanent staff and four freelancers who were all hired in 2021.
Talent includes: Joeboy (1.1 million TikTok followers), Priscilla Anyaby (66,000 TikTok followers), and Sunita Rai (59,000 Instagram followers)
Prior to starting Matter Media Group, Andal worked in PR and social-media marketing on the brand side for five years, and then as a talent manager at several firms.
Now, as is the CEO and founder of Matter Media Group, Andal heads a team of 11 employees across Los Angeles and New York.
She launched the agency in July 2016, and her first official hire that September was an assistant. She was also supported in those early days by her brother (who is now the director of business affairs), her lawyer, and Salomon Miranda (who is now a talent manager at the agency). The firm started with eight clients that Andal brought over from her previous company.
Matter Media Group represents entrepreneurs and storytellers across all platforms. The firm currently has a roster of 39 clients across the US, Canada, and Japan.
Talent includes: Alisha Marie (8 million YouTube subscribers), Remi Cruz (2.5 million YouTube subscribers), Louie Castro (2.7 million YouTube subscribers), and Adelaine Morin (2 million YouTube subscribers)
Prior to launching the talent-management and brand-strategy agency Ode in 2020, 25-year-old Jashima Wadehra worked as a freelance writer, consultant, and producer, and was the music-partnerships lead at Brown Girl Magazine. Through her work, she met several BIPOC creators and saw that those who were in music, acting, or subject-specific content were often neglected by teams that didn’t know how to integrate them into brand deals.
“The creator economy had an influx of ‘representation’-based initiatives without any knowledge of what true inclusion looked like for talent from POC communities and minimal safeguards for talent in those campaigns and initiatives,” she said. “Existing agencies and collectives didn’t know how to not tokenize talent while still helping them develop global audiences around the world.”
Wadehra started Ode so that there would be a space that caters to children of immigrants, as well as immigrant brands, businesses, and artists.
She and her cofounder Suswana Chowdhury work with a team of more than ten contractors to manage a roster of six exclusive creators and 30 campaign-based creators. The agency represents creators from different industries, but places a special emphasis on music creators and DJs. Ode was launched in New York City, but now has another headquarters in Los Angeles, California. Wahedra also works with teams in India, the UK, and Canada to scout talent and explore brand partnerships.
Talent includes: Avanti Nagral (521,000 YouTube subscribers) and DJ Rekha (14,500 Instagram followers)
Twenty-eight-year-old Jessica Joseph launched in June 2020 the talent-management agency Season25 with four clients. She now manages 10 creators and has worked on more than 600 brand campaigns with her four-person team.
Initially, Joseph’s agency focused on representing Black creators, but has expanded to creators from all socioeconomic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds.
The agency was founded in London, and most of the creators that Season25 represents are also UK-based.
Joseph, who was born and raised in the UK, decided to start her own talent agency after working for the influencer-marketing platform Whalar, where she managed building the UK arm of its exclusive talent division. Before that, she worked for the talent-management agency Gleam Futures, which she said was her first introduction to the creator economy.
“The space was almost exclusively young, white, and middle class,” she told Insider.
She connected with a lot of Black creators while working at Whalar, and said she became hyper aware of the lack of diversity in the space. The early days of the pandemic gave her time to think about how she could help more Black creators access opportunities, and Season25 was born.
“It gave us all time to reevaluate what is truly important,” she said. “For me, I knew I wanted to see change within the industry.”
Talent includes: The Kabs Family (2.2 million TikTok followers), Onyi Moss (166,000 Instagram followers), and Madame Joyce (558,000 TikTok followers)
Pamela Zapata began her career in Los Angeles where she worked for companies such as E! Entertainment, Ryan Seacrest Productions, Style Haul, and Sweety High.
During that time, she cultivated valuable relationships with influencers and talent for digital and on-air programming, brand sponsorships, and events.
After relocating to New York, she became the director of influencer marketing at United Entertainment Group. There, she led influencer partnerships, strategy, procurement, negotiations, and campaign reporting for various personal-care brands within the Unilever portfolio.
Through her 10 years of industry experience, she saw a gap when it came to diversity, she told Insider.
“Not only were people of color underrepresented in campaigns, I also found that many diverse creators did not understand their value when comparing what their counterparts were receiving for branded projects,” she said. “This gap is what fueled me to take the leap and start my own company in 2019.”
In 2019, she founded Society 18, an influencer management and consulting agency with a focus on multicultural and multi-ethnic content creators and digital strategy. She initially launched the company by herself with six clients.
From there, she made her first hire in 2020 once she had hit about 15 creators. Since then, the company has grown to represent 35 creators with a total of six full-time staff. The company is based in New York, Los Angeles, and Boston.
Talent includes: Charlize Glass (919,000 Instagram followers), Sara Escudero (1 million Instagram followers), and Franchelli Rodriguez (330,000 Instagram followers)
In June, 31-year-old Julian Andrew founded Talentiish, a talent-management firm that represents creators and celebrities in the digital and traditional entertainment spaces. He helps his clients land brand partnerships, prepare for live appearances, and secure book, film, and TV projects. He manages the agency by himself, but plans to expand in the very near future.
Before Talentiish, Andrew worked in the talent-management industry for more than 10 years and had an established roster of clients. Insider previously named him in 2021 as a top TikTok manager and in 2022 as a top YouTube manager.
Ten of the creators he managed in his previous roles followed him when he launched his own venture and are now represented by him. Most of them are also based in New York City, where Andrew resides, or in Los Angeles, California.
“Though I don’t exclusively represent BIPOC creators, I put a bigger focus on representing talent within that community as they are often overlooked,” he said.
Talent includes: Jae Gurley (1.7 million TikTok followers), Dexter Mayfield (872,000 TikTok followers), and Anthony Bowens (119,000 Instagram followers)
Based in Los Angeles, The Paul Harville Group was founded by Gigi Harville, who now serves as the CEO and founder.
Her professional background before founding the firm was in music. She still works in that space, and many of her creators are music artists and creators that she has helped develop.
She decided to launch her own firm after wanting to help a family member turned into something more. When she entered this space, she didn’t see much support for creators of color, and so, she wanted to provide for creators who had the talent but needed strategies, resources, and opportunities, as well as a way of making money from doing something they love, she told Insider.
The company began in 2013 with a team of two, and Bryce Xavier, Sydney Bourne, and Inaya Ashanti were its first clients.
By 2018, the firm had been recognized by publications including the Hollywood Reporter and The New York Times. The agency now works with all types of creators across most platforms (except for OnlyFans). It manages 15 creators, plus a digital sorority content house with 15 female creators.
The company has five remote employees.
Talent includes: Bryce Xavier (590,000 Instagram followers), Tyeler Reign (115,000 Instagram followers), Dre2Cray (4.7 million TikTok followers), Paris Simone (2.2 million TikTok followers), and The Sorority Girlz (3.2 million TikTok followers)
Prior to founding Rare Global, Ashley Rachel Villa, 36, was a legal counsel at StyleHaul, a YouTube multi-channel network focused on fashion and beauty.
Before that, she was an in-house counsel in film and entertainment, first at Lionsgate Entertainment Corp., then at Sierra/Affinity LLC, where she specialized in international film distribution, feature-film production, film finance, and TV development.
She launched in 2015 Rare Global, after Jenn Im, who became her first client, reached out to ask about negotiating a brand contract.
“I realized that there was no one I knew who I could refer her to — because precedent had not yet been established in these types of deal,” Rachel Villa said. “I realized the immense opportunity then, to be able to help talent build their digital media careers by growing together.”
Now as the CEO and founder of Rare Global, she works with top creators across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, and with talent in celebrity and commercial photography, makeup, hair, nails, and the performing arts. These artists work with the top names in fashion, beauty, and entertainment, with features in leading editorial magazines as well as global advertising campaigns.
The firm is based in Los Angeles and New York, and has 10 employees.
Talent includes: Jenn Im (1.7 million Instagram followers), Michelle Phan (8 million YouTube subscribers), Chloe Morello (2.6 million YouTube subscribers), Pokimane (6 million YouTube subscribers), and Christen Dominique (4 million YouTube subscribers)
Ray Hughes, founder and CEO of Ray Hughes Management (RHM), has a background in entertainment that includes producing and working as a production assistant on sets.
He decided in 2008 to launch his own Hollywood talent-management firm, and at the time, he worked closely with actors including Verne Troyer.
A few years later, Hughes signed his first digital creator, Megan Batoon, and since then he has managed both traditional actors and content creators.
The firm works with 27 clients, split between traditional actors, digital talent, and athletes.
RHM is based in Los Angeles, and the company has five employees.
Talent includes: Tway Nguyen (400,000 Instagram followers), Megan Batoon (1 million YouTube subscribers), and Jacques Slade (1 million YouTube subscribers).
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