Former NBA star turned entrepreneur Al Harrington is on a mission to make the cannabis industry a Black-owned enterprise — starting with his brand Viola. Forbes reports that Harrington’s cannabis line is expanding its products to Canada after sharing that Avicanna — a cannabinoid-focused biopharmaceutical company — will be licensing the brand and using it to help develop specific formulations for sale across the country’s medical and consumer retail channels. The company’s “commitment to research and development of cannabis in the medical and pharmaceutical industries makes them the perfect biotech partner to bring Viola’s brand to our Northern neighbors,” he said. “We’re excited to announce our partnership with Avicanna to expand into the Canadian market,” Harrington told Forbes. “Becoming the first Black-owned multinational brand is a significant milestone for Viola, and we look forward to expanding our product offering and Viola’s mission into a new market.” For the use of its...

This week, the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks announced Karen Wilkins-Mickey as its first-ever Vice President of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, a newly-created role for the organization, Black Enterprise reports. Within her new position, Wilkins-Mickey will lead the Seahawks’ overall diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and act as a liaison for the team, its senior management group, players and the community to lead initiatives and programs. She will report directly to Seahawks President Chuck Arnold. “I am thrilled to welcome Karen to the Seahawks family as our organization’s first Vice President of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion,” said Arnold in a statement. “Our organization is guided upon core values of acceptance and understanding that help us create a culture of respect, equality and inclusiveness both on and off the field. Over the past year, we’ve looked to take additional meaningful steps to directly address inequality and social justice efforts and felt it was critical to add...

Becoming a Harvard student is a high achievement on its own, but to become the student body president thanks to your peers is an even greater one. Just ask 20-year-old Noah Harris, the first Black man to be elected by the student body to become president of Harvard’s Undergraduate Council, reports Hattiesburg American. Harris is a junior government major from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He succeeds two other Black students who have headed Harvard’s Undergraduate Council. The first to serve in the role, Cary Gabay, was a Black man chosen in 1993 by members of the council, and the second was a Black woman, Fentrice Driskell, who was also elected. “I definitely don’t take that lightly,” Harris said of the confidence placed in him. “Especially with everything that went on this summer with the death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, all the protests that went on in this moment of racial reckoning in this country. This is a major statement by the Harvard student body to...