IMPACT-Magazine

IMPACT-Magazine Empower. Encourage. Educate. We highlight ordinary people living extraordinary lives. To advertise: [email protected]

IMPACT-Magazine page is about being the change we want to see in the world! It is more than us talking about it...we highlight people who are being about it! We are bringing about a social change through the power of words and pictures. In 2012, after celebrating five years in publication, IMPACT released its sister publication, "Flawless IMPACT"! Flawless aims to depict the understanding that bea

uty is in the eye of the beholder! If you are comfortable with the skin you are in, you will exude a magnificent power to the world! Flawless highlights the movers and shakers in the beauty and display undiscovered beauties in our "Flawless Fresh Face" monthly issues.

How does one experience two traumatic racial incidents, one ending with a settlement payment, & become one of the most r...
06/02/2026

How does one experience two traumatic racial incidents, one ending with a settlement payment, & become one of the most recognizable Black conservative commentators in America?

Candace Owens has a podcast, a massive social media following, a New York Times bestselling book, & a documentary. She has been a prominent fixture on FOX News & has testified before the House Oversight & National Security Committees.

According to NewsOne, Candace Owens argued that issues such as Black-on-Black crime & the absence of fathers in the home are more pressing concerns for the Black community than white supremacy. This accusation is factually incorrect, as statistical evidence shows that many Black fathers are actively involved in their children’s lives.

Candace Owens didn’t build her career by speaking truth to power. She built it by making power comfortable. Her rise to prominence began in 2017 when she launched Red Pill Black, a platform designed to convert Black people to conservatism. Within months, Donald Trump was tweeting about her. Charlie Kirk hired her at Turning Point USA. The conservative media machine embraced her fully.

Because she was useful.

A Black woman who tells white conservatives that racism is a myth is not threatening systems that depend on racial inequality. She is a shield for them, an effective talking point, & a defense against accountability.

When Candace Owens says systemic racism doesn’t exist, it doesn’t matter that every structural data point contradicts her. What matters to the people platforming her is that a Black woman said it. This is the function she serves: not being factually or statistically correct, but providing protection.

She testified before Congress against reparations & when the backlash came, she doubled down. Because doubling down is the product, controversy is the currency, & the people funding her career don’t lose anything when Black communities suffer the consequences of the policies she promotes.

Candace Owens has proximity to power, but she uses it to make systems that harm Black people easier to defend. Black faces in high spaces are not coming to save you.

Candace Owens is proof.

For nearly two decades, IMPACT Magazine has documented the builders, the executives, the celebrities, and the entreprene...
05/30/2026

For nearly two decades, IMPACT Magazine has documented the builders, the executives, the celebrities, and the entrepreneurs who engineer change without asking permission.

Along the way, brands started asking: “How do we reach her?”

Her. The educated Black professional woman. The mid-to-senior level decision maker. The woman who doesn’t just buy products, she chooses them.

Modern Proof is the answer.

Modern Proof is a boutique cultural brand strategy firm built on the foundation of IMPACT Magazine. We help brands identify, reach, and resonate with women across culture, life stage, and market segment.

We bring together brand strategy, media architecture, cultural intelligence, and market access to help our clients build brands that women don’t just buy, but choose, trust, and return to.

What Modern Proof offers:

Brand Strategy. Positioning, messaging architecture, audience definition, brand voice. The strategic foundation every brand needs before marketing makes sense.

Cultural Market Access. Credible, trusted entry into women’s markets through IMPACT Magazine’s platform, audience, events, and editorial infrastructure. This is not advertising. It is cultural legitimacy.

Brand Management. Ongoing content strategy, platform development, community growth, partnership development. The sustained guidance that protects and grows brand equity over time.

Who Modern Proof serves:

Consumer brands entering or repositioning in female-dominated markets.

Emerging personal brands who need strategic architecture, not just marketing support.

Corporations and organizations that need cultural intelligence to reach women more effectively.

Nonprofits and mission-driven organizations whose work centers women.

The IMPACT Advantage:

IMPACT’s audience of educated, mid-to-senior level professional women represents one of the most discerning and loyal consumer segments in the country.

Access to that audience is not available through traditional media buys. It is earned through trust.

Modern Proof is the bridge.

Interested? Email: [email protected]

We think. We be.

donated $80 million to support after Trump cut $1 billion from public broadcasting.One woman. One check. $80 million.N...
05/29/2026

donated $80 million to support after Trump cut $1 billion from public broadcasting.

One woman. One check. $80 million.

Not a crowdfunding campaign. Not a matching grant. Not a coalition of donors pooling resources over months. One person who understood the value of the infrastructure and wrote the check to protect it.

Meanwhile, Black media is dying.

Not because there isn’t an audience. Not because the work isn’t excellent. Not because the need isn’t urgent.

Black media is dying because we don’t value what we build.

We have endless conversations about the death of Black media. We write think pieces. We host panels. We mourn the loss of publications that shaped us.

But we don’t write the checks that keep them alive.

Connie Ballmer didn’t wait for NPR to collapse before she acted. She saw the threat. She valued the institution. She moved.

Black people see Black media dying in real time and ask, “Why isn’t someone doing something?”

The answer is: we are the someone.

Black media doesn’t need eulogies. It needs revenue. It needs subscriptions. Sponsorships. Advertisements. Donations. It needs Black businesses to spend their marketing budgets with Black outlets the way white businesses spend theirs with white outlets.

It needs Black readers to pay for the work the way they pay for Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify.

Connie Ballmer’s $80 million wasn’t about charity. It was about infrastructure. She understood that NPR is not just a media outlet. It’s a system that shapes how millions of people understand the world.

Black media does the same thing. But we treat it like a luxury instead of a necessity. We value what sustains us. And right now, the evidence shows we don’t value Black media enough to keep it alive.

That’s not a funding problem. That’s a values problem

We think. We be.

To support , partner or advertise with us. Email: [email protected].

Sherrilyn Ifill was President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund from 2013 to 2022.For nine years, sh...
05/29/2026

Sherrilyn Ifill was President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund from 2013 to 2022.

For nine years, she led the organization Thurgood Marshall founded. The organization that argued Brown v. Board of Education. The organization that has fought for civil rights for over 80 years.

And for nine years, she fought against everything Clarence Thomas stood for. When Clarence Thomas voted to gut the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, Sherrilyn Ifill fought to restore it.

When Clarence Thomas voted to strike down affirmative action, Sherrilyn Ifill fought to defend it. When Clarence Thomas ruled against workers, against fair housing, against environmental protections, Sherrilyn Ifill was in the courtroom fighting for them.

She didn’t just critique the Supreme Court. She built the legal infrastructure to challenge it.

This is what unmuted leadership looks like.

Not proximity to power for the sake of access. But proximity to power for the sake of dismantling systems that harm Black communities.

Sherrilyn Ifill is now a Professor at Howard University School of Law, training the next generation of civil rights lawyers.

Clarence Thomas sits on the Supreme Court dismantling civil rights protections.

One builds. One destroys.

This is part of our Unmuted Leadership series. Follow for a new profile every Thursday.



We think. We be.

05/28/2026

is a Princeton professor, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, and the author of four books including Race After Technology and Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want.

Last week, IMPACT profiled Ruha in our Unmuted Leadership series. She spoke at Spelman College about “Black Faces in High Spaces,” which inspired IMPACT’s series documenting Black people who have proximity to power but use it to uphold systems that harm Black communities.

Viral Justice is Ruha’s answer to what comes next. Not reform. Not waiting for institutions to change. Not hoping that the right people in the right positions will finally do the right thing. Viral justice is what happens when communities stop asking for permission and start building the world they want.

Ruha writes about mutual aid networks that fed people during the pandemic when the government failed. About community land trusts that keep housing affordable when developers want to gentrify. About bail funds that free people when the criminal justice system criminalizes poverty. About abolitionists who are building alternatives to policing, not reforming it.

This is not inspirational. This is structural.

Viral justice means understanding that change doesn’t come from the top down. It comes from the bottom up. It spreads like a virus, person to person, community to community, until it becomes undeniable.

Ruha’s work matters because it refuses to wait for Clarence Thomas to rule differently or Kay Cole James to change her mind or any Black face in a high space to suddenly decide to dismantle the systems they benefit from.

Viral justice asks: What if we stopped waiting for the system to fix itself and started building something new?

This book is about people who understand that justice is not something you ask for. It’s something you build. Who should read this:

Anyone tired of waiting for institutions to change.

Anyone who has watched people with power refuse to use it for liberation.

Anyone ready to stop asking for justice and start building it.

This is part of our Unmuted Reads series, where we feature books that provide structural analysis. Follow for a new book every Wednesd

Clarence Thomas has been a Supreme Court Justice for 33 years.He is the second Black person ever appointed to the Suprem...
05/26/2026

Clarence Thomas has been a Supreme Court Justice for 33 years.

He is the second Black person ever appointed to the Supreme Court. He replaced Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights lawyer who argued Brown v. Board of Education and spent his life fighting for Black liberation.

And for 33 years, Clarence Thomas has used that power to dismantle every civil rights protection Black people fought for.

He voted to strike down affirmative action in college admissions. He voted to gut the Voting Rights Act. He voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. He has consistently ruled against workers’ rights, against environmental protections, against any structural change that would limit corporate power or expand access for marginalized communities.

Clarence Thomas doesn’t just disagree with progressive policy. He actively works to dismantle the legal infrastructure that protects Black people.

In 2013, he voted to strike down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. That decision allowed states with histories of racial discrimination to change voting laws without federal approval. Within hours, states began passing voter ID laws, closing polling locations in Black neighborhoods, and purging voter rolls.

In 2023, he voted to strike down affirmative action in college admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. That decision eliminated race-conscious admissions, making it harder for Black students to access elite institutions.

He has ruled against fair housing protections. Against labor unions. Against environmental regulations that disproportionately affect Black communities.

Black faces in high spaces are not coming to save you.

Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall, a man who spent his life dismantling legal segregation. And Clarence Thomas has spent his career rebuilding it.

One commenter on our last post said: “In the words of Steve Cokely, name the names.”

This is the name.

Clarence Thomas has proximity to power. He uses it to uphold systems that harm Black people.

Follow for the next post in this series.



We think. We be.

Most people learn how to survive inside systems. Nicole Jack learned how to build one.What started as a tax and notary b...
05/25/2026

Most people learn how to survive inside systems. Nicole Jack learned how to build one.

What started as a tax and notary business became something much larger: a blueprint for ownership, financial literacy, and generational change.

As the founder of LLC and Stamped Academy, Nicole is teaching aspiring entrepreneurs how to move from service provider to business builder; creating sustainable businesses rooted in collaboration, not competition.

Through her From Seal to CEO mentorship program, she’s helping people understand that wealth is not just about income. It’s about structure. Strategy. Compliance. Community. Legacy.

At , we believe the people reshaping industries are often the ones building quietly, intentionally, and without permission.

Nicole Jack is one of them.

Read her full story in the latest issue of IMPACT Magazine: Unmuted Wealth: Building Legacy, Power, and Prosperity.

We think. We be.

Septima Clark trained Rosa Parks. She also trained thousands of other Black Southerners in citizenship schools across th...
05/23/2026

Septima Clark trained Rosa Parks.

She also trained thousands of other Black Southerners in citizenship schools across the South. She taught them how to read. How to register to vote. How to organize. How to resist.

Martin Luther King Jr. called her “the mother of the movement.” But you’ve probably never heard of her. Because Septima Clark didn’t create a moment. She built a system.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Clark developed citizenship schools that became the foundation for the Civil Rights Movement. These schools taught Black people in the rural South how to pass voter literacy tests, how to understand the Constitution, and how to organize their communities.

Rosa Parks attended one of Clark’s citizenship schools at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. What Parks learned there shaped what she did on that bus in Montgomery.

But Rosa Parks became famous. Septima Clark did not.

Because infrastructure doesn’t photograph well. Systems don’t make headlines. The person who trains the icon is forgotten while the icon is remembered.

Clark was fired from her teaching job in Charleston, South Carolina for refusing to give up her NAACP membership. She lost her pension. She was blacklisted.

And she kept building. She didn’t build for recognition. She built for results.

By the time the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, Clark’s citizenship schools had trained over 25,000 people. Those 25,000 people trained tens of thousands more.

That’s not inspiration. That’s infrastructure.

Septima Clark built the system that made the Civil Rights Movement possible. And most people don’t know her name.

This is part of our Legacy Fridays series, profiling the Black builders who created infrastructure that outlasted them. Follow for a new profile every Friday.



We think. We be.

05/22/2026

Ruha Benjamin has spent years warning the world about something many people still refuse to confront: representation alone does not equal liberation.

A graduate of Spelman College and now the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, Benjamin’s work sits at the intersection of race, technology, medicine, power, and structural inequality. Long before AI became a mainstream public concern, she was sounding the alarm about the ways algorithms, data systems, and “neutral” technologies quietly reproduce racial harm.

groundbreaking book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code examined how digital systems can encode the same discriminatory structures many claim society has moved beyond. In it, Benjamin expands on the concept of the “New Jim Code,” showing how innovation often disguises inequality beneath the language of efficiency, objectivity, and progress.

This is why IMPACT created the “Black Faces in High Spaces” series.

At Spelman College, Benjamin spoke directly about Black people who gain proximity to power yet uphold the very systems harming Black communities. Not every Black face in a high place is there to dismantle oppression. Some become caretakers of the structure itself.

A Black executive overseeing surveillance technologies targeting Black neighborhoods is not liberation. A Black politician supporting policies that criminalize Black communities is not solidarity. A Black doctor dismissing Black pain is not progress.

Her work extends beyond academia. In 2018, she founded the JUST DATA Lab, bringing together activists, technologists, and artists to reimagine how data can be used in service of justice rather than control. She also served on the independent “Real Facebook Oversight Board,” examining the influence and accountability of one of the world’s most powerful technology platforms.

Benjamin’s scholarship forces a harder conversation about structural positioning: who benefits from systems, who protects them, and who is sacrificed to maintain them.

Follow for our Unmuted Leadership series, profiling builders & thinkers every Thursday.

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