We are doctors, lawyers, scientists, executives, entrepreneurs, actors, politicians, nutritionists, students, managers, athletes, writers, influencers and various other young Black Americans passionate about shaping our future in the 21st century and beyond.
This is our narrative and it’s always evolving.
Established, April 2017, the weekend of the 25th anniversary of the L.A. Uprising (Riots) of 1992 Melanin MeetUps was birthed from the idea to shape the American Black community and experience in the 21st century.
First Melanin MeetUp in Los Angeles 2017
What is our mission?
The mission of Melanin MeetUps is to Rewrite the Narrative. This means to create a better understanding of the African-American experience and overall story to create a more unifying identity due to the deliberate erasure of persons, culture, values, and beliefs from systems designed to do so.
What is a Melanin MeetUp?
A Melanin MeetUp is a collaborative experience to develop initiatives through shared discussions and data for community building. A Melanin MeetUp uses a community-driven model that also targets generational and individual traumas of the African-American experience to create emotional availability for healing, solutions, and advancement across self, industry, and community.
What do we advocate for?
We advocate for emotional availability to create space for ideation. We encourage members to acknowledge; change, or remove one’s self from social constructs, culture and/or laws that inhibit psychological identity (self-esteem, self-image, individuality) and impede the advancement of oneself to fulfill our mission statement.
What industries are we targeting?
Our target industries are mental health, education, and media. However, our model helps to provide a collection of professional experience across multiple industries from our members, prioritizing existing or new targets of focus industries contingent on the collective.
Become a Melanin MeetUps member:
Join here to change the world!
Examples of initiatives birthed at Melanin MeetUps:
The Coalescent Pin
Melanin Meetups Forum
Click here to view/download our forum template and guidelines
Our website:
The Melanin MeetUps website was built by Amanda Clark, a graphic designer and art director living in Minneapolis. Variety is her medium in forms such as typography, illustration, branding, experiential spaces, packaging, design strategy, and working on her next gallery project. To see more examples of her work you can find her at amandaclarkdesign.com and @schnurclark on Instagram.