APRIL REIGN
ABOUT APRIL
The architect.
The strategist.
The one you call.
April Reign builds the narrative architecture that keeps organizations standing when the ground shifts.
HER WORK
April Reign is a strategic communications architect, a crisis strategist, and a messaging advisor who has spent a decade at the intersection of influence, consequence, and public perception.
Corporations call her when the message has to land. Studios call her when they need someone in the room who knows how to navigate the moment. Organizations call her when they are trying to do the right thing and need to know how to say so without flinching. She builds the strategy, shapes the message, and tells you the truth.
She is also the person who, on January 15, 2015, sent a tweet that changed an industry. #OscarsSoWhite became a global movement that forced the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to fundamentally restructure itself. Legends who had been overlooked for decades finally became Academy members.
FOUR CAMPAIGNS. FOUR WINS. ALL OF THEM REAL.
#OscarsSoWhite
On January 15, 2015, a single tweet changed an industry. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences fundamentally restructured itself. Legends who had been overlooked for decades finally became Academy members. That is April's fingerprint on Hollywood, and it is permanent.
#StopTheFight
Before #OscarsSoWhite, she created #StopTheFight, a campaign that successfully pressured the cancellation of a boxing match promoted to feature the killer of Trayvon Martin. Her campaign was so effective that the boxing promoter called her directly and canceled the fight a few days later. No budget. No formal organization. Just clarity and the ability to move people.
#NoConfederate
When HBO announced Confederate, a series imagining a present-day America where slavery existed in the South, April co-created #NoConfederate and shut it down. She drove the hashtag to number one on Twitter during a Game of Thrones broadcast, the top rated show at the time and notably helmed by the same showrunners attached to Confederate. That is not an accident. That is strategy.
#SheWillRise
In 2021, she co-founded Sista SCOTUS and the #SheWillRise campaign to pressure the Biden administration to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. Ketanji Brown Jackson was nominated, confirmed, and April and her co-founders were invited to the White House and had an intimate audience with Justice Jackson herself.
Before any of this, April practiced law for nearly two decades. She brings that precision with her into every engagement. Her instincts are not just instincts. They are structural, strategic, and built to last.
Today she works with established corporations, major studios, and well-resourced organizations at a crossroads. Some have never had the right people in the room. Others have gone quiet under the current political climate, afraid that continuing to do what they know is right will cost them. April works with both.
She has taken the main stage from SXSW to Essence Fest to the Smithsonian. She served as the inaugural host of the Inkwell Beach activation at Cannes Lions. She is a named advisor and credited on Soul, the Disney/Pixar film that won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. She was an early advisor to Spill, the conversation platform built to put community first, before it even had a name. That is not a resume line. It is a statement about her instincts and the trust placed in her judgment.
She is also, if you ask the people who know her best, the architect. The one who designs the system, shapes the narrative, and makes it possible for everyone else to move.
SELECTED CREDITS AND APPEARANCES
NAMED CULTURAL ADVISOR
Soul (Disney/Pixar) — Academy Award winner for Best Animated Feature
STAGES
SXSW, Essence Fest, the Smithsonian, Cannes Lions Inkwell Beach (inaugural host)
SENIOR ADVISOR
Spill — a real-time, visual-first platform designed to foster, reward, & protect cultural conversations.
FEATURED PARTICIPANT
Black Twitter: A People's History
(Hulu, directed by Prentice Penny)
