BOARD MEMBERS
VINCENT DAVIS is the founder of Vintertainment Recordings, a prolific Hip Hop and R&B boutique-style record company that immediately became successful with its first series of Hip Hop releases.
As a producer and arranger for his label, VINCENT, who got his start in the music industry as a college intern working for Clive Davis, the head of Arista Records, one of the premier record labels at that time, was one of the first producers to creatively orchestrate his recordings, solely using portions of other records, emphasized with DJ scratch effects over Hip Hop beats. This process, his records, initiated the industry term, "sampling."
VINCENT's marketing, promotion, and distribution strategies, formulated at Arista, helped him to successfully promote his label and the creative artist and producers that he was able to help give prominence to; The B-Boys, DJ Chuck Chillout,
Kool DJ Red Alert, Joeski Love, Doug E. Fresh, Keith Sweat, Teddy Riley and Entouch. VINCENT's recordings with Keith Sweat started the era of "New Jack Swing," which contemporized R&B music.
VINCENT DAVIS
Dr. Ademola Olugebefola is a renowned contemporary artist whose work has set standards of innovative excellence. Widely collected and published in hundreds of books, catalogs, magazines and newspapers, his work has also been featured in major museums, universities, galleries and on television in the USA, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and Japan.
His paintings, graphics and mixed media work is shown extensively on the internet. Born in the US Virgin Islands and raised in New York City, Ademola has expanded his national exhibitions to New York State’s mid Hudson Valley over the last few years. TransArt has presented his work in Newburg, Kingston and has presented his major 5 acre environmental art as part of Jazz In The Valley. In a career that spans three decades, Ademola feels these 5 acre environmental art installations Nature Symphony and MAMBO: A Tribute to Tito Puente, in concert with the music, is a portal to new spiritual and creative frontiers.
Among a spectrum of recent art, culture and special projects activity, Albany International Airport hosted his paintings and a lecture as part of a landmark exhibition in October 2000. In June 2001 Poughkeepsie’s Albert Shahinian Gallery presented Olugebefola and painter Helen Douglas in a critically acclaimed exhibition. Recent solo exhibitions and educational presentations include: IRADAC at City College; Vassar College, Poughkeepsie NY; CHI Gallery in Oakland, California; Rush Arts in Chelsea, NY; and recent group shows at Fire Patrol #5 Art and Gallery X in Harlem and Danny Simmon’s Corrider Gallery in Brooklyn.
DR. ADEMOLA OLUGEBEFOLA
His most recent multimedia solo shows Blues And The Abstract Truth and Goddesses and Gurus: Earth, Wind and Fire April 2005 at Savacou Gallery in the east village, are highlights of his recent work over the last few years. Having just returned from Salvador, Bahia and Rio deJaniero Brazil in February 2005 Ademola will be seen as part of a Caribbean region PBS special documentary on similarities in Brazilian culture, the British and US Virgin Islands where he was born.
Fondly thought of as this Board's local community liaison, Russel Shuler, an education administrator and community leader is also a well respected, lifelong member of the Harlem community.
SHULER is the dedicated Founder, and Chief Executive Officer of Youth Education Through Sports Inc., YES Inc., a Harlem-based not-for-profit organization committed to providing supplemental academic and athletic programs to student-athletes in need of college and career assistance.
His organization benefits greatly from SHULER's decades of experience of developing, organizing and implementing innovative, educational-based youth sports programs, locally, nationally and internationally, along with the partnerships that the organization has established.
SHULER also serves on the board of Manhattan's Community Board 11, Black Agency Executives (BAE), Community Counseling and Mediation (CCM), and the Calvin Ramsey Scholarship Fund.
In addition to that, SHULER is one of the captains of the New York City Marathon. Overseeing the 21st mile, SHULER is responsible for supervising the efforts of the many volunteers who assist the tens of thousands of Marathon runners headed to the finish line in midtown Manhattan as they travel through the Harlem area.
RUSSEL SHULER
The Captain also serves as the liason between that 21st mile area and Marathon headquarters.
Of his many awards and accomplishments, SHULER is most proud of once being named, “New Yorker Of The Week” by NY1 - Spectrum News, one of New York City's daily television news programs.
Board Member Jihaad Muhammad, a Westchester County resident, is a Licensed Registered Representative in the financial securities industry dealing specifically with stocks, bonds and ETF's, daily traded securities, whose share price, sold on the exchange, adust, fluctuate based on their supply and the demand.
JIHAAD is also a published fashion and portrait photographer who discovered his love for taking pictures while attending college.
Borrowing his mother's camera durimg a summer break, JIHAAD realized his interest in this art form, and has been passionate about it ever since.
"I enjoy finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, within my photographs, and within my life."
His self-published coffee table book entitled, "Eye Of My Mind"
featuring some of his most cherished photos, exemplifies all of that.
JIHAAD MUHAMMAD
NEEMA BARNETTE owns her own production company called Harlem Girl Productions, while also owning a production company titled Reel Rebel Productions with her husband, Reed McCants. Notably, she is also the executive director of a theatre and performance company for young artists titled Live Theatre Gang. Barnette is also a part-time teacher, where she teaches aspiring students a directing course at UCLA and USC. She spends the other part of her time running a theatre company titled Live Theatre Gang with her husband and actor, Reed R. McCants.
At age 21, Barnette directed the play, "The Blue Journey" by OyamO, at Joseph Papp's Public Theater. In 1982, Barnette co-produced the Emmy award-winning After-School Special, "To Be A Man" along with Cliff Frazier, who was also the writer and director. The both won Emmys for Outstanding Children's Programming. The movie starred, Robert Earl Jones, Estelle Evans, Stuart Bascombe, Julius Hollingsworth and Curtis Worthy. James Earl Jones (Robert Earl Jones son), was executive director.[
Barnette has directed stage, episodic television, made for TV movies, and feature films. Sky Captain was her first short film which she directed as part of the American Film Institute's (AFI) Directing Workshop for Women in 1985.
NEEMA BARNETTE
In 1990, she founded Harlem Girl Productions Corporation. Since 1997, Barnette has also worked for the Harlem Lite Productions. She has directed multiple seasons and episodes of various television sitcoms, including A Different World, The Cosby Show, Gilmore Girls, and 7th Heaven.
In 1997, Barnette directed the film Spirit Lost, a psychological thriller with a love triangle that includes a ghost. Robin R Means Coleman wrote in her book Horror Noire that Spirit Lost was a "rare horror film that was nearly an all-female affair" and that the film prominently featured characters that served as moral arbiters and saviors. She would later revisit the film in her 2023 work The Black Guy Dies First, further noting the codependent relationship between John and the ghostly Arabella.
In 2002, she was selected as one of ten artists to judge the American Film Institute's "Best Films Award.”
In 2003, Barnette directed her first feature film, an adaptation of Civil Brand; she told the Los Angeles Times it was inspired by the original screenplay by Preston A Whitmore II and by an urban women's prison tale. Even after her mother passed, she encouraged Barnette to continue pursuing the film. Once the movie was completed, it earned many awards and played film festivals like Sundance, the American Film Institute, and the American Black Film Festival in Miami, where “Civil Brand” won the $15,000 Blockbuster audience award.
Her most recent feature film is Woman Thou Art Loosed: On the 7th Day (2012), her 11th movie and third for theatrical release. The film is a thriller and family drama following the story of a marriage on the rocks, which received an NAACP Image Award Nomination for Best Independent Feature in 2012. Barnette directed two episodes of Being Mary Jane: "Hot Seat" and "Don't Call It A Comeback" (2015 - Season 3). Barnette is the Executive Producer of Black History Mini Docs, 90-second videos featuring the stories of African-American heroes and she-roes and daily tributes posted on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
In 2009 Barnette directed a gospel musical film, "Heaven Ain't Hard to Find," starring Kim Whitley, Cliff Powell, and Reed McCants, which it previewed on platforms on HBO and BET.
In 2016, she joined the series Queen Sugas as director and producer.
Barnette won her first NAACP Image® Award for directing efforts like "One More Hurdle," an NBC dramatic special. Another documentary of hers titled "The Silent Crime," an NBC about domestic violence received four local Emmy® nominations. Her successful debut resulted in subsequent directing stints on "Hooperman," "The Royal Family," "China Beach" (Peabody Award), "Frank's Place" (Emmy® Award), "The Sinbad Show," "Diagnosis Murder," "A Different World" and many episodes of "The Cosby Show."
Neema Barnette is also part of the DGA African American Steering Committee and a member of The Black Filmmakers Foundation since its inception. She is also an active AFI alumnus and takes part on the panel of the AFI Independent Film Committee. She has also played a part in being on the executive board of the IFP Gordon Parks Scholarship fund. She has been a judge for the NAACP Feature Film Award and is an annual judge for the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles.