Tobi Oredein

Founder · Award-winning journalist · Speaker · Host

Tobi Oredein

Building the future of Black women’s media, from London.

Founder and CEO of Black Ballad, the leading media platform and community for Black women in Britain. Award-winning journalist. International public speaker. Mum of two.

Tobi Oredein standing in front of a cream curtain, wearing a patterned dress
The Black Ballad Weekender 2026 · Photo by JKGordon Photography

Bio

A founder in the messy middle.

Tobi Oredein is an award-winning journalist, entrepreneur and speaker. She is the founder and CEO of Black Ballad, the leading media platform and community for Black women in Britain. 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 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.

Tobi has collaborated with major brands including L’Oréal Paris, Garnier, Google, This Girl Can, the NHS and Spotify to create campaigns and experiences that empower Black women to live their best lives. 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 TV Times and IPC Media, and she has written for The Guardian and The Independent. 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 founding a company in the messy middle: past the launch, before the exit, still scaling.

The Black Ballad story

“I’m Tobi Oredein, a founder in the messy middle.”

Work with Tobi