Exploring the Creator Community
Jonathan Jackson ’09 builds worlds and connections through media
BY JANA F. BROWN
Dinners at the Jackson family’s kitchen table in Nashua, New Hampshire, were special times to gather and share a meal — and much more. For Jonathan Jackson ’09 and his brothers, breaking bread together also meant conversations that extended beyond the surface, challenging them to develop their critical thinking skills.
“If you made a point, you had to have source material,” Jackson says. “My parents made sure we defended our arguments. Education is important to them, so they forced us to do the work to have a clear opinion.”
That self-directed approach led Jackson to the idea of boarding school. After researching about two dozen options and zeroing in on St. Paul’s School, he delivered a PowerPoint presentation to his parents and convinced them the School was the best place for him to continue his intellectual development. Once enrolled, Jackson found that the discussions that began at his family table were amplified around the Harkness tables of St. Paul’s. Those healthy debates helped him develop his mission-driven approach to life beyond higher learning.
“I’m a person who likes to ask questions that bring people closer to the truth,” Jackson explains. “I think that’s my life’s work.”
It didn’t take long for Jackson to get started. In 2014, the year after he graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, he was one of four co-founders of Blavity, a tech and media company “for forward-thinking Black millennials pushing the boundaries of culture and the status quo.” Blavity now reaches more than 100 million users per month on its many platforms, ranging from culture to fashion to tech to home, and more. With the company thriving, in 2018, Jackson felt he’d accomplished what he was “called to do” and decided to move on.
“I have an insatiable hunger to learn, and I get really uncomfortable with stasis,” he explains.
His choice to navigate the unknown beyond the success of Blavity is what has defined the last decade for Jackson. Unfailingly curious and industrious at heart, he’s chosen to reinvent himself. Today, he identifies as an entrepreneur and media builder who wears multiple hats. In his role as an adviser, Jackson works with entrepreneurs, creators and leaders to help them develop their thinking on narrative strategy, serving as “a fractional biographer” who helps clients extract the parts of their story they take for granted. He also co-hosts a podcast, “Due Dilly” (short for “diligence”), that he dubs “Frontline for business” — referencing the PBS documentary show — and has launched a newsletter, that focuses on creating research-driven content for business audiences who enjoy stories about the evolving creator economy. Jackson is also focused on an upcoming project that centers around food, music and culture.
In taking these professional risks, Jackson emphasizes craftsmanship over quantity, noting that he believes in taking his time to create content people can trust. “There’s a false dichotomy between volume and enjoyment,” he says. He’s particularly interested in “the quality of questions we ask” and focused on clarity and consistency in communication.
His recent work as a 2024 Global Fellow with the Ford Foundation has refined Jackson’s strategic thinking around media and entrepreneurship. Through various mediums, he focuses on building ecosystems for creative environments and asking critical questions related to investment in ideas, disruption and innovation. Jackson sees the creator economy not as something entirely new, but as a new way of communicating. He’s encountered several shifts since co-founding Blavity, including moving from an era of guaranteed traffic to today’s landscape that features significant fragmentation between streaming, independent newsletters and subscription-based communities. He sees opportunities to create online hubs connected through common values and history.
As the media landscape continues to evolve with artificial intelligence in the equation, Jackson’s approach offers a blueprint taken from those childhood discussions at his family’s kitchen table: stay curious, recognize patterns, build for human connection and “always ask what world you’re trying to create.”