When Kierna Mayo was a student at Hampton University in the late 1980s and early ’90s, she spent a lot of time in the library’s archives looking through magazines, she said, a lot of which were produced by Johnson Publishing Company.
“I was just so incredibly fascinated with the perspective that African-Americans often took in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s in particular,” Mayo said. “They were just really sharp-minded, used kind of provocative language that was enticing to me as a young woman, but it was also the images. That’s what drew me in first.”
Mayo wrote fashion editorials for Hampton Script, HU’s student publication, and described herself to be a maverick in the way that she dressed. She said she was highly politicized and vocal when she disagreed with decisions the university made on the students’ behalf.
Mayo also wrote her senior thesis was about Jet Magazine.
“I was pretty clear on my perspective on black culture and identity. That’s what I worked on honing in on most during my Hampton years,” Mayo said.
Today, she describes herself in her Twitter biography as a “feminist boy mom, print aficionado, aesthetic snob, perfect wife, kind soul and overall captain.”
But Mayo recently earned a new title, added to the beginning of her Twitter biography, that no one else currently holds: “EBONY EIC/VP” — editor-in-chief and vice president of digital content for Ebony magazine. Read More via Daily Press
