Binta Niambi Brown
Adjunct Instructor
Binta Brown is the founder of omalilly projects, and is the former Head of Operations and Strategy at Keep Cool/RCA Records. Prior to Keep Cool, she led Chance the Rapper's recorded music & publishing operations. Through omalilly projects, Binta manages musical artists, comedians, writers and authors, and is a partner in Florida based Indie Atlantic Studios, with whom she produced “Fly Like A Girl”.
Prior to her career in entertainment, Binta was an international corporate lawyer and human rights advocate, who began her career at Cravath, Swaine and Moore and was a partner in Kirkland & Ellis LLP. During her legal career she advised global entertainment and media companies.
She holds leadership roles in the SummerStage Music Festival (New York), the American Theatre Wing and the Arts for Illinois Relief Fund, and is a trustee of the American Theatre Wing, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Merit School of Music and a member of America Media’s Board of Directors. She also serves on the Leadership Council of the Recording Academy’s Black Music Collective, the National Museum of African American Music’s Music Industry Relations Council, and the Advisory Board of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. Binta previously served on the boards of the New York City Parks Foundation, Barnard College, Columbia University, and a board committee of the New York Philharmonic. She is an adjunct professor at Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University Tisch School of the Arts.
Binta is on Billboards 2021 Change Agents List, Billboards 2020 Hip-Hop & R&B Power Players list, Billboards 2020 Women in Music List, and has been recognized by emPOWER/Financial Times as #8 on its list of the 100 most prominent minority business executives globally, as a Fortune 40 Under 40 Business Leader, the Root’s 100 Most Influential African-Americans, Crain’s New York 40 under 40, JET Magazine 40 under 40, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. She has been featured in Billboard, Variety, Rolling Stone, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan Magazine, Real Simple Magazine, the Washington Post, the New York Times, on CNN, the BBC and on NPR. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
A graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University, and the Columbia University School of Law, Binta was also a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Business and Government, Executive in Residence for the New Orleans Startup Fund, and has certificates from Harvard and Yale.