The Other Brown Girl

Name
Patrice Callender

Location
Brooklyn, NY

Where to find you on the web:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/patricec
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/patricecallender
Websites: http://theotherbrowngirl.com
http://hellandheartaches.com

What do you do/are you progressing towards doing?

I started in Community Management and now find myself writing about Pop culture ideally I would love to find a way to blend the two. Also after my intro to the Social Media scene and figuring out that girls, much less brown girl were looking to connect with each other developing The Other Brown Girl is becoming a passion.

Why do you participate in Social Media/What goal is it helping you work towards?

I love the idea of being to communicate and collaborate with people across all forms of Media be it in NYC or parts elsewhere. Not to mention on a purely Social level I’ve made some amazing friends the past year.

What other Brown Girl do you think all of the Social Web should be following?

Well we had other channels which we could have made contact, but I didn’t really get to know Tameeka Ballance ( @Tameekatime ) till we both became active on Twitter.  She is an obscenely talented Video/Film artist and Blogger

Name
Nichelle Stephens

Location
Brooklyn, NY

Where to find you on the web:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/niche
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/nichellestephens
Websites: http://cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com
http://www.pepsiweinspire.com
http://keepingnickels.com
http://nichellestephens.com

What do you do/are you progressing towards doing?

I am the community editor of Pepsi We Inspire. I am the co-founder of
the most popular blog about cupcakes, Cupcakes Take The Cake. I do
freelance business consulting and social media strategy.

Why do you participate in Social Media/What goal is it helping you work towards?

Communicating and sharing information with people is something that
comes naturally to me. I want to promote other Black women who do
social media.

What other Brown Girl do you think all of the Social Web should be following?

Corvida Raven of SheGeeks. She is like “Mashable” if it was ran by one
talented woman.

Name
Emily Cavalier

Location
The corner of 47th and What Happened, Brooklyn, NYC

Where to find you on the web:

My Main Sites:
Website: http://MouthOfTheBorder.com
Blog: http://EmilyCavalier.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/EmilysPearl

Other Social/Multimedia Sites:
Tumblr: http://wompwomp.tumblr.com/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/MouthOfTheBorder
Foursquare: http://foursquare.com/user/emilyspearl
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/people/603to212/
Yelp: http://emmaluscious.yelp.com/
Blip.tv: http://motb.blip.tv/
Blip.fm: http://blip.fm/emily
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Emmaluscious
Plancast: http://plancast.com/emily

What do you do/are you progressing towards doing?
I wear a few different hats. My main role is overseeing business development and major corporate sponsorships for events for senior marketing executives. My clients include groups like Facebook and Microsoft who provide products and services for marketers at major corporations. Through that work, I’ve developed deep knowledge of the marketing and advertising industries and have relationships with some of the most innovative folks in those verticals today. It’s exciting, challenging and satisfying work for me because I’m not a salesperson by nature. I’m a relationship person, and this career pushes me to grow my strategic and tactical thinking while relying on my skillset as a connector.

I’m also a writer who focuses on ethnic food and communities, life in New York City and social media. My main goals over the next few years center around building community and educating people about New York City’s ethnic neighborhoods through the foods they eat and how they cook. All of that work is going on on my main site, MouthOfTheBorder.com.

Why do you participate in Social Media/What goal is it helping you work towards?

Social media is integral to meeting my professional (and often my personal) goals. I stay in the loop on what’s happening in marketing and advertising on a daily basis through Twitter and RSS feeds, and SM helps me make connections with people I feel I wouldn’t otherwise have as close of a relationship with. These guys are the CMOs of major, major brands, but they take time to talk to me and stay engaged because they know I walk the walk and talk the talk when it comes to staying emotionally invested in their brands and trying to understand what it takes for them to do their jobs well.

The other major reason I rely on social media is that it keeps me on the radar. I have been introducing in person to so many amazing people because I have a reputation in my social networks for being knowledgeable about food, social media, marketing and advertising. People can see me share on those topics openly, so they wind up introducing me to amazing people and opportunities as they become available. That sort of thing is harder to quantify but it is invaluable. Social media is one of the largest planks in my raft to get me to the other end of “it’s not what you know, but who …”

What other Brown Girl do you think all of the Social Web should be following?

Nichelle Stephens, aka @niche on Twitter. Her website is at http://nichellestephens.com/. She’s got her hands in a little bit of everything from personal finance to comedy, but I mainly connect with her on the topics of food and social media.

Niche is one of the three founders of Cupcakes Take The Cake (http://cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com/), the most well-known blog in that category. She also edits Pepsi We Inspire (http://www.pepsiweinspire.com/), which I find interesting as an example of a major brand leveraging its market share to bring consumer (in this case, women) together.

I admire Niche because she’s been working consistently over the past few years, at least as long as I’ve known her, to bring minorities in tech together and nurture those relationships. She’s excellent and knowledgeable about what she does and, because of that, she can be sort of a divining rod for bring the right people together.

Welcome to the Other Brown Girl (OBG). This site (or the idea for this site) was born one night in January at Digital Dumbo.

A fellow brown girl walked up and introduced herself. Then she added how it was nice to finally see another brown girl at a Social Media event. There were plenty of us in the room that she didn’t manage to see so I happened to be her “gateway brown girl”.

So thus my mission is born. There are plenty of us. We just need an introduction.

I am based in New York City, but hope to include brown girls from across the globe. I will be filling out my profile, but wanted to start off with the first brown girl that I met in Social Media.

Left to Right: Me, Brian Simpson of the Roger Smith Hotel and Brown Girl 001 Emily Cavlier.

This photo was taken the night we met actually. It was a Tasting Dinner at Lily’s the Restaurant at the Roger Smith Hotel. Invites were sent via Twitter and I managed to snag one. It was a fabulous night (and meal..get the Risotto if you ever find yourself there) and has has lead to an amazing year, full of amazing people brown and otherwise.

So that’s it. Expect change as the of amount of profiles (and hopefully interest) grows.

You can find me on Twitter @patricec as well as follow the site @otherbrown. You can also reach me on Facebook.

Patrice.