Biography
Shavone Charles is the Head of Global Music & Youth Culture Communications at Instagram. She leads all of Instagram’s music and youth culture communications out of the Facebook office in Los Angeles. Based at a company famous for enabling “influencer marketing”, Shavone has proven to be deeply influential in her own right at Instagram, Twitter and the wider tech community.
She started her career at Twitter where she spearheaded the company’s global music and culture communications out of their San Francisco headquarters. Since then she has engineered an incredible track record of groundbreaking social media collaboration with some the biggest stars of the entertainment world including Drake, Paul McCartney, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Janet Jackson, Prince, Adele, Kendrick Lamar, Missy Elliott, Britney Spears, Garth Brooks and more. Her work has resulted in Shavone being recognised in the Forbes Magazine “30 under 30” power list of the most notable young professionals from around the world.
As the first African-American woman to ever be hired onto both Twitter and Instagram’s communications teams, Shavone has also been highly active in aiding people of color in tech. She helped found Blackbird, Twitter’s first-ever employee resource group for African American employees. Currently, she aspires to construct a platform for women of color across industries, in hopes of providing a support system for young women striving to succeed and make their mark in the world.
