About Naima
Naima Cochrane is an award-winning music marketer and leading voice in Black culture whose superpower is storytelling.
MUSIC EXECUTIVE
As a music industry professional, Naima spent more than 20 years between record labels including Arista, Columbia, and Epic Records and then in artist management, first with EGOT John Legend and later with Oscar-nominated, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony award-winning actress and singer Cynthia Erivo. In a
business driven by trends, shaping artists’ brand stories with genuine voice, content, and messaging was Naima’s north star.
STORYTELER
In 2017, Naima launched #MusicSermon, which began as a storytelling series on Twitter/X focused on pre-blog era Soul and Hip-Hop. The series was a viral hit and encouraged community around shared nostalgia and love of music. That community expanded from Twitter/X to Instagram with Naima’s annual #BlackMusicMonthChallenge. The community and engagement around #MusiSermon garnered Naima a spot on Essence Magazine’s inaugural Power 40 list for music in 2023.
#MusicSermon prompted a transition into journalism, and since 2018 Naima’s voice and work have been featured in outlets including Billboard, Rolling Stone, and the NY Times, as well as published works including 2021’s Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap. Partners including Spotify, Netflix, and Sirius XM/Pandora have tapped Naima’s unique expertise for campaigns, research, and scripted projects, including Sirius/Pandora’s Webby-award-winning All Music is Black Music podcast. She remains entrenched in the business side of the entertainment industry as a marketing consultant and led the creative strategy for Empire Records’ Clio Award-winning campaign for late singer Aaliyah’s highly anticipated catalog re-release in 2021.
EDUCATOR
Naima is passionate about framing music within a broader cultural and historical context in ways that serve current and future Black artists and executives. She leads mission-critical research as a founding board member of the advocacy organization the Black Music Action Coalition, including the org’s annual Music Industry Action Report Card. In Fall 2022, she joined the faculty of TheClive Davis Institute at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts where she is an Assistant Arts Professor.
Naima splits her time between Silver Spring, MD and NY, indulges in too much TV, and is known to randomly break into ’90s R&B choreography in public places.
Get in Touch
Need someone a speaker, moderator, guest lecturer, or host? Give me a mic and I’m ready. Or maybe you have (or need) an idea for a partnership or collaboration. Let’s explore the possibilities together. I’d love to hear from you.
Naima Cochrane 