Tobi Oredein

Tobi Oredein is an award-winning entrepreneur, journalist and speaker. She is the founder and CEO of Black Ballad, the leading media platform and community for Black women in Britain and Europe. She is a businesswoman with a mission. Black Ballad has outlasted its mainstream competitors and, in the process, evened the media playing field for Black female journalists and writers, paying over £1.5 million to Black women along the way. Through her leadership she has become a prominent voice in conversations about race, culture and gender in Britain.

Tobi has led Black Ballad’s transformation from a free blog to a paid membership, and now to a media company that produces research and insights so brands can serve this audience better and Black women get the service they deserve.

When Black Ballad launched its membership in 2016, it was one of the first media publications to ask its audience to subscribe and pay for content. Under Tobi’s direction it became a lifestyle membership that puts Black women first: members pay monthly or annually for media made for them and lifestyle perks. Those perks include exclusive events, such as Armani Beauty masterclasses and Garnier skincare classes, product boxes from ORS and L’Oréal Luxe, and theatre tickets from the National Theatre. Black women make up the majority of members, and Black Ballad also has paying customers who are not Black women.

Tobi has collaborated with major brands including L’Oréal Paris, Garnier, Google, This Girl Can, the NHS and Spotify to create campaigns and experiences made for Black women. These partnerships deliver content that resonates deeply with Black women while helping brands engage authentically with an audience that is too often overlooked.

In celebration of Black Ballad’s tenth anniversary, Tobi created the Black Ballad Weekender, a flagship event that brings together 2,000 Black women from across the UK for a weekend of ambition, community and inspiration through panel talks, masterclasses and brand activations. The Weekender showcases Black talent across industries and is fast becoming a staple in the cultural calendar for Black British women.

Before Black Ballad, Tobi spent a decade in journalism, starting at IPC Media. Her last full-time role before going full-time at Black Ballad was as a writer on the BBC’s writers’ desk, and she has written for The Guardian, The Independent, Stylist, Grazia and Glamour. She still writes every week: her Founder’s Letter goes out to more than 23,000 readers and is the longest-running newsletter for Black women in the UK.

She is a wife, a mum of two and a Londoner, and she writes openly about being an entrepreneur and being in an entrepreneur stage no one talks about: the messy middle, post-launch, before the exit, still scaling.

Black Ballad started in 2014 because Black women were almost absent from newsrooms and from the pages of the magazines Tobi worked on. Under Tobi’s leadership it has gone from a free site to a membership model, and now to a media company that produces research and insights so brands can serve this audience better and Black women get the service they deserve. It runs the UK’s biggest weekend for Black women and has outlasted the mainstream titles that launched alongside it.

Everything Black Ballad makes starts with what its readers actually say. It holds over 100 million data points on an audience no one else has this level of insight into: her finances, her beauty and hair habits, her health concerns, her career ambitions, her travel aspirations and everything in between. That data feeds the editorial, the events and the partnerships, which is why brands like Armani Beauty, This Girl Can and the NHS keep coming back.

Most brands and organisations want to reach Black women and get it wrong: the wrong message, the wrong channel, the wrong moment, or a campaign that is forgotten the day it ends. Tobi has spent twelve years building the community, the data and the trust that show what works, and she consults for companies that want to get it right. Her work with Garnier Haircare, below, is the proof.

She works with marketing, consumer insight and leadership teams on how to reach and keep underserved audiences, and how to build a community that lasts rather than a campaign that ends. Everything is grounded in Black Ballad’s 100 million data points and what its readers actually say, so the advice comes with evidence, not opinion.

Tobi is an international public speaker who has spent twelve years building a media brand in public, and she talks about it the way she writes: first person, specific, and honest about what went wrong. She brings Black Ballad’s audience data with her, so a room leaves with numbers as well as a story.

She speaks on four things: building communities and reaching underserved audiences, using AI in a human way in business, entrepreneurship, and working as a modern parent. She guest lectures on the same themes for journalism, media, marketing and business students, using real Black Ballad numbers and real mistakes.

Her journalism training shows when she is the one asking the questions. She moderates panels for brands, media companies and cultural institutions, interviews guests on the Black Ballad Weekender main stage in front of 2,000 Black women, and has interviewed Kerry Washington, Sabrina Elba and Kamille on stage. Off stage, she secured Black Ballad’s exclusive interview with Emma Grede.

Tobi started her career in journalism, and her last full-time job before Black Ballad was as a writer on the BBC’s writers’ desk. She still freelances. She writes on health, pop culture, beauty and social issues, and how each of them intersects with race and gender. She also interviews, from public figures to the women her readers want to hear from.

Her comment pieces and interviews have run in The Guardian, the BBC, BuzzFeed, Grazia, Glamour, Stylist and many other titles, and every week she writes the Founder’s Letter, Black Ballad’s newsletter to more than 23,000 subscribers, where she writes openly about being an entrepreneur and being in an entrepreneur stage no one talks about: the messy middle, post-launch, before the exit, still scaling.