Jesse Owusu, CEO and Co-Founder of CORD and a Rising Star finalist at the 2026 Black British Business Awards, talks to Fair Play Talks about entrepreneurship, representation, ownership and his ambition to create more routes into the creative industries for Black and underrepresented talent.
Owusu shares his journey from leaving a steady role at Expedia at 24 to building CORD into a profitable seven-figure music and entertainment marketing agency working with brands including Nike, Universal Music Group, Red Bull, Apple and Google. He reflects on the challenges of building a business without an established network or external funding, and why credibility, access and ownership remain such important issues for Black professionals and founders.
He also explains why representation alone is not enough, arguing that real progress depends on who controls budgets, shapes strategy, owns client relationships and benefits from growth, as well as creating practical opportunities for the next generation through paid work, responsibility and access to industry networks.
Fair Play Talks: Can you briefly tell us about your career journey to date?
Jesse Owusu: I was 24 when I left a campaign management role at Expedia. It was a steady job, I had a clear path in front of me and, on paper, it was the sensible option. But I had this growing feeling that I wanted to build something of my own, and more importantly, something closer to the culture that actually influences how people discover music, artists and brands.
So I left before there was any real evidence that the alternative would work. For the first year, I lived off my savings and built CORD without funding, a website or an established network in the music industry. The hardest part was convincing people to trust a young company with serious campaigns.
We started with a YouTube channel but the work gradually became much bigger than content. Labels and brands started coming to us because they wanted the cultural understanding behind what we were doing. They’d ask us to work with their artists, then ask us to help with strategy, campaign direction and cultural consulting. We said yes, figured out how to deliver it and kept going.
CORD is now a profitable seven-figure music and entertainment marketing agency. Revenue has grown more than fivefold over the past two years and we’ve worked with brands including Nike, Universal Music Group, Red Bull, Apple and Google, helping brands and artists generate more than a billion views on social.
But what I’m proudest of is proving there is real commercial value in cultural understanding. CORD started with the belief that the people closest to culture shouldn’t just be brought in to execute somebody else’s strategy. They should be trusted to shape it and that’s still the principle behind the company.
Fair Play Talks: What specific challenges have you encountered along the way?
Jesse Owusu: People romanticise entrepreneurship as “bet on yourself” and “trust the process”. When you’re self-funding, you watch your savings go down while you’re trying to build something that doesn’t have a proven business model yet. Every decision has a consequence because there isn’t a big financial cushion behind you.
This only gets more complicated the more you grow. You need great people to deliver the work, and the costs hit before the revenue does. The other challenge was credibility.
We were young, we didn’t come into the industry with an established network and we didn’t have a big agency name behind us. So we couldn’t rely on access. My co-founder Daniel and I had to let the work be the argument. Later on, that also meant learning not to say yes to everything. When you’re building a business, it’s easy to fall into the trap of treating every piece of revenue as good revenue. But as a services business the only thing that really compounds is reputation, so taking on work that builds it is pivotal.
Taking on the right work and building our reputation gave us the opportunity to lead on social campaigns for Kendrick Lamar, Doechii, Arsenal and Red Bull. That’s how we’ve approached the whole business. Do good work. Deliver on it. Build the relationship. Let the next opportunity come from what you’ve already done.
Fair Play Talks: In your industry, are there any specific challenges that Black professionals face on their career journeys that other groups of people do not encounter?
Jesse Owusu: In music and entertainment, Black creativity is central to the internet culture but the infrastructure around that culture is much less representative. And by infrastructure, I mean the companies holding the contracts, owning the catalogues, controlling distribution, allocating marketing budgets and making the long-term commercial decisions. It’s an important distinction because there’s a big difference between visibility and ownership. In advertising and social, Black creatives are more visible than ever. But who owns things?
You can be highly visible in a creative industry and still have very little influence over where the value goes. Black professionals are sometimes brought into a room because of their cultural credibility or creative understanding but that doesn’t always translate into control over the budget, the commercial strategy, the client relationship or the equity. So I think the conversation needs to move beyond simply asking who’s in the room. It’s important to ask, who controls the budget? Who signs off the strategy? Who owns the client relationship? And who benefits when the company grows?
Those questions tell you much more about where power actually sits. There are also very practical barriers: access to capital, senior sponsors, inherited networks and opportunities that aren’t publicly advertised. If you don’t have those things, you can end up having to prove your commercial credibility repeatedly while also being expected to provide the cultural expertise. The bigger challenge is moving from contributing to culture to owning and controlling meaningful parts of the value chain around it. That’s what I want CORD to be an example of.
Fair Play Talks: Are you involved in promoting Black talent, race equality or other diversity initiatives?
Jesse Owusu: The most meaningful thing I can do is build opportunity into how CORD operates rather than treat diversity as a separate initiative. Especially now, when getting your first proper opportunities in work is more competitive than ever. So when we talk about creating opportunity, I don’t think that can just mean telling young people to work harder or build a better CV.
We’re a team of twelve, predominantly under 30 and from minority communities. For several people, CORD has been their first real opportunity in an industry that can be incredibly difficult to enter without the right connections or a conventional CV. We’re intentional about giving people responsibility early, letting them build a track record and trusting them with work that actually matters.
We also create opportunities through the work itself. We bring emerging Black creators into campaigns, commission people who might not otherwise get a major-label or major-brand brief, and make introductions that can turn into longer-term relationships. Several creators have had an early break through CORD, and some have gone on to be signed through our YouTube channel which serves as a platform for emerging artists.
Fair Play Talks: In your opinion, are companies doing enough to stamp out discrimination, and what more could they be doing to promote racial equity in the workplace?
Jesse Owusu: Some organisations are making real progress but I think there’s still a tendency to measure progress by how it looks rather than what is actually changing. I’d ask three fairly simple questions: who gets hired, who gets promoted and who controls the money? If an organisation looks diverse at entry level but becomes much less diverse as you move towards senior leadership, budget holders, partners and boardrooms, then something is happening between recruitment and decision-making that needs to be examined.
The conversation also needs to move from representation to allocation. Who gets the biggest opportunities? Who gets the important client relationships? And who gets promoted and gets access to senior decision-makers? Who receives supplier spend? Who eventually gets ownership?
Those things have much more tangible consequences than a values statement. I’d also like to see more transparency around progression. Publishing recruitment numbers tells you very little if people from underrepresented backgrounds are leaving earlier, being promoted more slowly or simply not getting access to the career-making work that leads to senior positions. For me, racial equity is ultimately a business-design question.
Fair Play Talks: Given the focus on diverse talent, what more can organisations be doing to attract Black/minority talent, as well as retain them?
Jesse Owusu: If your hiring relies heavily on referrals, unpaid internships, a narrow group of universities or people who already understand how to navigate your industry, you’ve restricted the candidate pool before you’ve even started interviewing. Paid entry-level opportunities, open applications, transparent job descriptions and hiring for potential rather than existing access can make a meaningful difference. But retention is where I think organisations often struggle. Attracting diverse talent can become a recruitment exercise. Retaining diverse talent is a career-architecture exercise.
People stay when they can see a future for themselves. They need to see people like them progressing, but they also need senior people actively investing in them. That’s why sponsorship is so important. Mentorship is advice, and advice is useful. Sponsorship is different. It’s someone with actual influence putting your name forward for the important pitch, the client meeting, the stretch role, the budget or the promotion. They’re spending some of their institutional capital on your access.
At CORD, we try to give people responsibility before their CV makes it feel obvious that they’re ready for it. If you only give significant opportunities to people who have already had significant opportunities you’re not developing talent or expanding our industrying your keeping it stagnant and recycling access.
Fair Play Talks: What was your reaction when you heard that you are a Black British Business Awards finalist?
Jesse Owusu: I was grateful. When you spend years building something from scratch, it’s easy to stay focused on what’s next and forget to stop and appreciate how far you’ve come. So hearing that what we’d built had been recognised was a special moment.
My second reaction was thinking about the team. A lot of them are in their first proper roles in the industry and seeing them work on campaigns that agencies many times our size would want on their books makes me incredibly proud. So it didn’t feel like a personal nomination. It felt like something the team could be proud of too.
Fair Play Talks: How important are awards and organisations like the Black British Business Awards in promoting Black/minority talent and Black role models?
Jesse Owusu: I think they’re incredibly important. For a lot of Black and minority professionals, particularly those building businesses or careers without established networks behind them, having your work recognised can mean a lot. It gives people visibility but it also gives them a platform to tell their story and show what is possible.
When I left Expedia at 24 there wasn’t a blueprint for me to follow, and building during Covid made that feel even more isolating. So I know what it does for someone to see an unconventional route being recognised. It changes what they think is possible and gives them the confidence to keep going even when it doesn’t look like there is a clear path to success.
Fair Play Talks: What does the BBBA theme of #SHINE mean to you, and how do you see yourself contributing to the next generation of Black business and professional leaders?
Jesse Owusu: To me, #SHINE is about creating something that other people can see themselves in. There is so much talent that doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves, so shining a light on people who are doing great work truly matters as to quote Marianne Williamson “as we let our own light shine,we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”
In terms of contributing to the next generation, we’ve recently partnered with a national charity on a 12 month programme for young people from underrepresented communities who want to work in music and content. It includes training and paid work placements so they can build real skills and experience.
When I think about what we’ve built at CORD, I’m proud but I’m probably even more interested in what that example can mean for the people coming after us. I want the next generation of Black business and professional leaders to have more routes into industries where they’ve historically been underrepresented, and to see that they don’t have to wait for someone to give them permission to build something of their own.
Check out all the finalists of this year’s BBBAwards here.
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