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Oprah’s Leadership Academy Board Member, Opens Her Own Airline

Siza Mzimela is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fly Blue Crane. Mzimela is the first woman of color to establish an airline. Her previous experience includes being the Executive Chairperson of Blue Crane Aviation, a company that provides consulting, aviation legal services, and aircraft management services to other African airlines.“We hope to expand our flight destinations to Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo,” she says of her 50 plane operation which is based out of O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg. As if running an airline weren’t enough work, Mzimela is also apart of the South African Tourism Board and the board of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls. [Clutch Magazine]

CNN Apologizes For Assassinating The Character Of Freddie Gray

In a recent report on the trials for the officers accused of murdering Freddie Gray, CNN made some unnecessarily disparaging comments. “The April 19 death of Freddie Gray, the son of an illiterate heroin addict, made him a symbol of the black community’s distrust of police” read the article. CNN received immediate backlash for the statement and the networks president, Jeff Zucker has since issued an apology. “This was a mistake, The editorial intent as the digital team has laid it out to me was to make clear he had a difficult upbringing. But clearly it did not come across that way when it was written and published. We recognize that. It did not work and we removed it. And were transparent about that” said Zucker at a recent town hall event. [The Wrap]

College Protests May Affect Supreme Court Ruling On Racism

The recent protests for racial equality on college campuses have occurred at the University of Missouri, Ithaca College and Yale, the alma mater of three Supreme Court judges. The Supreme Court is a week away from hearing the case of Abigail Fisher, a Caucasian college student who believes she was denied admission into the University of Texas at Austin because of a racial quota. The Supreme Court has rejected Affirmative Action petitions but it allows schools to take account of race as one of the factors in achieving a “critical mass” of minority students. [The New York Times]

Multi-Million Dollar Food Stamp Corruption Case Happening In NYC

Petronila Peralta, 51 and Cherrise Watson-Jackson, 44 were the masterminds behind a multi-million dollar welfare scheme. Since 2008 Peralta, Watson-Jackson and 11 co-conspirators have created fake electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards to generate $120,000, which was used to buy cases of Red Bull from BJ’s Wholesale Club which they then resold to local stores and they split the profit. The crew also posed as landlords to steal emergency housing vouchers meant to prevent families from becoming homeless. [NY Daily News]

Illinois Attorney General Says Laquan McDonald Shooting Requires Civil Rights Investigation 

“Trust in the Chicago Police Department is broken, especially in communities of color in the City of Chicago,” Attorney General Lisa Madigan wrote in her urgent request to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Following the 400 day cover up of the video showing Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times, Madigan is asking the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division to investigate the Chicago police department’s use of deadly force. This request follows Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel firing police Superintendent Gary McCarthy. In Madigan’s letter to Lynch she highlights Chicago’s “pattern of discriminatory policing” citing over five years of incidents similar to McDonald’s. [The Huffington Post]

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For 2024’s iteration of MadameNoire and HelloBeautiful’s annual series Women to Know, we knew we wanted to celebrate the people who help make the joys of film and television possible. To create art is to create magic. This year, we spotlight Hollywood Executive’s changing the face of cinema.