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everal years out of college and into a solid job at IBM, Warner realized she had no spark for the
gig, and soon after, a graduate school assignment gave her even more clarity.
“My key driver had been always earning potential because I’d grown up in a single-parent
family that definitely had its financial struggles,” she says. “I wrote a paper for class saying, from
that point forward, I was going to let passion and purpose lead and see where that would take me.”
Knowing it was “a true exploratory process with nothing traditional about it,” she says, she
volunteered at Rush Communications, owned by Russell Simmons. “I was lower than an intern,”
she says. “I wasn’t even getting paid.”
Within a year she became its general manager, spearheading a financial literacy tour called
“Get Your Money Right” and cause campaigns like P. Diddy’s “Vote or Die.”
From there, Warner hung her own shingle, called Egami Group, to help marketers reach diverse
audiences with purpose-driven messages.
She’s grown a roster over the past decade that’s included blue-chippers like Major League
Baseball, Target and Verizon, and her company became the first black female-led firm to win a
Cannes Lion Grand Prix in 2018, for Procter & Gamble’s “The Talk.” (Egami, a longtime partner of
P&G’s “My Black Is Beautiful” platform, provided the key insight about conversations happening in
African-American households across the U.S.)
Along the way, Warner has published two books, the case study and best-practices manual
Profit With Purpose and The Big Stretch, about making dreams a reality. The latter book ties in
with her ongoing Dream Project, a boot camp-style empowerment conference she founded for
entrepreneurs that’s drawn more than 200,000 attendees since 2013.
Warner’s 2020 plans include media extensions of The Big Stretch, such as digital seminars,
retreats and possibly TV and film content highlighting dreamers’ paths to success.
Her independent agency, meanwhile, will continue to seek out like-minded clients “who want to
make a difference and speak to diverse audiences in culturally relevant ways,” she says, “so that
our work can be tied to tangible change.” —T.L.S.
Shantelle Guyton
senior manager
Allied Moxy
Warner has provided
“coaching plus sisterhood plus
professional development,” says
Guyton, her former assistant,
and “advocated for me to be on
projects that were bigger than
my title, paid for me to attend
key conferences and given me
honest feedback.” And when
Guyton landed a new gig, Warner
gifted her “my very first pair of
really expensive designer shoes.
It wasn’t the price tag that
mattered as much as it was the
message—she was helping me
step into a new destiny.”Teneshia Jackson Warner
founder, CEO EGAMI GROUP
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