After last year’s overwhelming success, the OWN IT Summit is back! As The Hoya is the campus media partner, 4E will be periodically bringing you profiles of the illustrious speakers. Our second featured speaker is the poet, arts education advocate and CEO Azure Antoinette. 

She was called “the Maya Angelou of the Millennial Generation” by Forbes Magazine when they included her in their 2012 “100 Most Powerful Women in the World.”

Azure worked in human resources for six and a half years. One day she heard a Def Poetry Jam poem that ended with the line, “Do not let this universe regret you.” The next morning she quit her job to become a poet. She had $4 in her bank account but she says she was happy.

Now she’s taking over the world.

In addition to being a phenom poet, she is the founder and CEO of the Aalchemik Collective. The collective includes an independent publishing house, an apparel company, a visual art incubator that supports urban art, and STODIO: Alchemy, an arts education organization, which motivates and teaches 15 to 22-year-old artists.

Azure has written for Maria Shriver, The Gap, Johnson & Johnson, Beats By Dr. Dre, Girl Scouts of America, The Documentary Group, California Arts Council and American Cancer Society’s benefit Art 4 Life. She is an official Clean & Clear Ambassador for the “See the Real Me” campaign and has published the books BitterSweet, Commissioned and Commissioned: The Back Story.

Azure came to Georgetown and owned it at the Own it summit last year. The Fourth Edition was really excited about it. We love her and you should too.

Here is part of the spoken word poem she recited in this OWN IT video.

Azure has done a million other incredible things and follows us on Twitter. So we’re pretty cool by association.

Get yourself to the Own It summit this year, get inspired and go be damn fine humans.

Info: https://www.azureantoinette.com/#!engagements/c1m4i, https://www.forbes.com/pictures/elli45gdfk/azure-antoinette/,https://www.gap.com/browse/info.do?cid=1008049
Photo:https://instagram.com/_azureantoinette/, Olivia Hewitt for The Hoya,https://www.thehoya.com/at-guwil-own-it-summit-women-share-wisdom/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W20eJP0gjU, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1SUNKmbmw0