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Imani Ellis has always been creative—as a child, she wanted to pursue her passion for dance and become a ballerina. But she never imagined she would end up as vice president of unscripted entertainment publicity at NBCUniversal, or that her “side job” would be founding CultureCon, a three-city networking event for Black and brown creatives.
After years of searching for networking communities where she felt comfortable and understood, Ellis decided it was time to create the space herself. “For a good period of time, I was waiting for someone to create CultureCon and then I would go to it,” she tells Glamour. “I was hopping around different networking events that I just didn’t feel like I could be myself there. I remember President Obama making a speech and saying, ‘We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.’ It was like a light bulb went off in my head, and I’m like, Wow, I’ve been waiting for someone to come along and create this brave space—am I supposed to be that person? Sometimes you spend a little bit of time running away from it because you’re just so sure that someone else is gonna do it.”
The idea started as a potluck in Ellis’s apartment, when she invited her close friends who happened to be in creative industries for a night of food and conversations. In its current form, which was founded in 2017, the self-described Ultimate Creative Homecoming takes place throughout the year in major cities like New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, connecting creatives of colors and featuring guest speakers like Tracee Ellis Ross, Taraji P. Henson, and Lena Waithe.
CultureCon was in full effect this past Saturday in New York City, with a line down the block and a venue filled with food trucks from local restaurants, interactive pop-up booths, and photo opportunities. A major highlight of the event was a conversation with 2 Dope Queens cocreator Phoebe Robinson and Tracee Ellis Ross on Ross’s upcoming docuseries, The Hair Tales on Hulu, which highlights Black women and their relationship with their hair.
“At the heart of The Creative Collective is to be in service of the community,” Imani Ellis adds. “So that ebbs and flows depending on what the community needs. We are in such a beautiful rhythm because we don’t have to guess. We can just ask our community, ‘What do you want more of?’ The answer is usually resources and tool kits and roadmaps to do these things.”
As for what’s next, Ellis wants to expand the Collective’s digital presence. “That might look like digital master classes on confidence building or how to do an end-of-year review. Those are the kind of opportunities we want to continue to foster.”
Ahead of CultureCon, we caught up with Ellis to talk about her work essentials, best career advice, and so much more in Glamour’s latest installment of Doing the Work.
Glamour: What time do you wake up?
Imani Ellis: I usually wake up around 6:30 a.m. I had to become a morning person. My mom has always been a morning person, but I had to become a morning person by pure functionality because I get the most done in the morning when I can just have that uninterrupted zone of genius time.
What’s your typical morning routine?
I have quiet time. It’s 15 minutes to think about what’s coming down the pipeline for the day, to have a mini devotional, and set my spirit. So that’s 15 minutes, not long at all. After that, I hop in the shower to wake myself up and the next stop is coffee.
How do you take your coffee? Do you own an espresso machine?
Yes, I’m a Keurig girl. I love the Dunkin’ pods, and it depends on how I’m feeling. I’ll either do a hot coffee with a splash of oat milk and a little bit of brown sugar. Or I’ll take that same concoction, pour it over ice, and do an iced coffee. Medium size, not too much because too much caffeine makes me jittery. But it really has become a morning ritual to have some coffee and just start the work.
You mentioned reading mini devotionals in your morning routine. How has your spirituality informed the work that you do?
Spirituality is incredibly important to me. It ironically reminds me that we’re a part of something so much bigger. Take yourself a little less seriously, take the fire drills a little less seriously, because it gives you perspective.
What was your childhood dream job?
When I look back, my parents really allowed me to have an imagination. I watched a lot of Disney and a lot of cartoons. There were those sayings like, “You can be whatever you want be.” I believed it. When I was a child, I did ballet from age 3 to 14. I did ballet five to six days a week for hours and hours a day. I thought I wanted to be a ballerina. And then one day I woke up as a junior in high school and I was like, “I don’t want to do this the rest of my life.” And just like that, I was done with ballet.
What was your first actual job?
My first job was as a cashier and model at Abercombie & Fitch.
How do you balance your current position as VP at NBCUniversal with CultureCon? How do you and your team manage these responsibilities?
It started as this potluck in my apartment where I invited some of my best friends over, and a lot of those friends are still a part of the Collective today. So it really is a collective effort. That’s really important for me because you want to be honest about the machine and the muscle behind these beautiful moments. And it is a team of us that are volunteering our time to build these spaces for our community. The same thing goes at my 9-to-5. I have a really great team, and I’ve been here now for a third of my life, so I’ve been able to start as a coordinator and learn all the efficiencies.
How do you deal with rejection in your field?
I love this question because I learned to deal with rejection very early. In retrospect, I’m so thankful, because in ballet, they are so rudely honest. It’s either yes or no. You made it, you didn’t, and they don’t sugarcoat it. It was very based on your performance. You couldn’t sweet talk your way to a higher level. So from a very young age, I was able to see that feedback and rejection made me stronger, because to live in a world where you never are getting corrected is not a world I want to live in.
That being said, I’m someone who loves to seek counsel. If I’m going through something hard, I’ll spend some time thinking about it, but I’ll also get feedback from those that I trust. And when it comes to rejection, I just say, “What is meant for me will find me.” And if it misses me, it wasn’t meant for me. Sometimes when you try to force a circle into a square and you don’t listen to the discernment, you end up looking back and being like, “Hm, I don’t think this would be meant for me.”
What’s the best money or career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I’ve ever received is that as hard as you work, you also need to advocate for yourself. For a long time I have been told, “Just work hard.” But you have to pair that with advocating for yourself. They go hand in hand. You can’t be the person wanting all of the perks but you haven’t done the work. If you know in your heart you’re driving results, you’re valuable, you’ve paid your dues, you’ve put in the time—you have to be brave enough to speak up for yourself.
What’s the last great book you read?
Oh, my God. I just finished reading Outliers, which I really love. I am also reading The School of Life, and it’s a series. I just finished a book about kindness and how it’s underrated, and I really love it. They’re these short, snackable books. It’s called On Being Nice. I’m reading Atomic Habits right now, so really interested in that.
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What is your go-to thank-you gift for colleagues, friends, and families, to show your appreciation?
I love food and flowers so usually it’ll be that. I’m also a quality-time kind of person, so we’ll go to a spot or an experience together.
Who are the people whose stories you’ll never skip over on Instagram?
Elaine Welteroth. She’s a great example of living life on her own terms and dispelling this myth that you can’t have a life that includes a family and ambition. I love Anne Doyle and her podcast [Power Up! The Podcast] and her vulnerability. Obviously anything Beyoncé drops. Then I’m a Shade Room girl—The Shade Room and The New York Times, that’s where I get my breaking news.
What is one work essential you can’t live without?
I would say my iPad with the pencil. It’s so efficient, I love it.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
