From orchestrating global campaigns for the biggest names in music to co-founding a powerhouse agency elevating African creatives on the world stage, Yvette Gayle has always been a master of spotting talent and crafting narratives that matter.
With a career that spans Columbia Records, Interscope Geffen A&M, and now Africa Creative Agency, she is not just shaping careers, she is redefining how the world sees African stories, blending strategy, culture, and heart into every project. Beyond her work with artists, Gayle channels her creativity into The Sitota Collection, a luxury brand inspired by personal ritual and intentional living.
We sat down with her to talk about her journey, the lessons she has learned from music to film, and the vision that drives her to build platforms where African voices do not just participate, they lead.
Glamour: What inspired you to transition from leading campaigns for global artists at Interscope Geffen A&M to co-founding Africa Creative Agency?
Yvette Gayle: It was much more personal than professional. My husband had been working and building in Africa for over a decade and through those visits, I fell in love with the continent. I remember having an epiphany when I realized there was a Universal Music in South Africa. Not because it didn’t exist or wasn’t thriving but because in all my years inside the domestic label (even though I didn’t work in International) it never once entered the room.
Not until we brought MTV and 50 Cent to Africa. That gap didn’t just feel like a gap but a cultural failure. In 2017, Nasty C received the BET nomination for Best International Act, at that time his then label hired me to consult to try and build a platform for him in the US. I did some press days with Black media and even tried to get him signed to IGA. I was genuinely enamored by him, like I was with a young 50 Cent. That crystalized something in me. Where were the structures and pipelines to help him leap beyond borders? ACA became the foundation for that type of institution.
Glamour: How has your early experience at Columbia Records shaped your approach to artist development and media strategy today?
Yvette Gayle: Columbia Records shaped everything. But what I carry most from that time isn’t just the craft of campaign building but it’s the memory of what it took for black music and black culture to be seen as legitimate, as aspirational, as worthy of mainstream attention. The 90’s was fascinating and often bruising at the same time. The industry was shifting, but the doors were not opening on their own. They had to be pushed. I remember working on the Lauryn Hill Harpers Bazaar cover and the significance of that moment. This was a high fashion magazine that simply did not put black women on its cover and here was this extraordinary, dark skinned, dread locked creative showing up completely as herself and the world responded. It felt like something cracked open. It was proof that the audience had always been ready.
The gates just needed to be removed. The experiences at Columbia with Destiny’s Child, The Fugees, Nas, Jermaine Dupri, Maxwell, and 50 Cent gave me convictions to never let go of. When the strategy is right, when the talent is undeniable and when you refuse to let your work be diminished, the architecture of a career matters as much as the talent itself. You can have the most talented artist but if the sequencing is off, if the partnerships don’t serve the long game, you will loose momentum which is hard to recover. At ACA we don’t just make noise. We build. Every campaign, every placement, every partnership must service something larger. A career that compounds over time, is a story the world keeps waiting for it to return.
Glamour: ACA has a strong focus on African storytellers. What unique opportunities do you see for African talent in the global film and television market?
Yvette Gayle: I think we are living in a historic moment. Streaming platforms have created an insatiable appetite for authentic storytelling from every corner of the world. It’s way a South African Netflix show can come in top 2 across the world. And African stories We are living in a genuinely historic moment. Streaming platforms have created an insatiable appetite for authentic storytelling from every corner of the world, and African stories are among the most compelling, most underrepresented, and most commercially viable in that pipeline. The opportunity isn't just in being seen. It's in owning the narrative.
I should say that film and television was new territory for me personally. I spent decades in music, and I still love that work deeply. But as ACA grew, so did my understanding of what our talent actually needed. It started in management and expanded into something far more intentional. The focus became building businesses, developing IP, and unearthing every possibility our actors have in front of the camera, behind it, and in the ownership structures that make a career sustainable long-term. That evolution changed how I see this space entirely. What excites me most right now is what's happening in South Africa specifically.
Productions are coming here in increasing numbers, taking advantage of the exchange rate, and what they're finding when they arrive is a creative ecosystem that punches well above what they expected. We have world-class talent in front of the camera. We have directors, writers, and producers behind it who are ready for the global stage. And we have exceptional below-the-line crews who can deliver at the highest international standard. At ACA, we're not interested in adapting African stories to fit a Western gaze. We're positioning our talent to walk into rooms at MIPCOM, ABFF, and Cannes as the authorities, as the ones who understand both the creative and the commercial value of what they're bringing. The world is ready. We just have to make sure African creatives are arriving with the right infrastructure behind them.
Glamour: Can you share a memorable campaign or project that had a significant impact on your career?
Yvette Gayle: There have been many but the ones that stay with me are the ones where creative and strategy aligned so perfectly that the campaign felt inevitable in hindsight. The experience that sharpened me the most, more than any other, was working with 50 Cent. He talks about our early days a bit in his book. I was fortunate enough to be his publicist at Columbia Records and then again at Interscope, which meant I had a rare through line across two of the most important chapters of his career. But what made it truly formative was that it grew well beyond the publicity work I did at the label. I became a trusted voice across the board, helping to ensure that every strategy aligned and that each move built on the last rather than existing in isolation.
That kind of integrated thinking, where music, brand, film, business, and media all serve a single coherent vision, which became the blueprint for how I approach everything. What 50 was building was genuinely groundbreaking. The Vitamin Water partnership was years ahead of its time, one of the earliest and most successful examples of an artist building real equity through a brand deal rather than just a cheque. Get Rich or Die Tryin' the film opened a conversation about artists as storytellers with IP of their own.
SMS Promotions, the boxing venture, G-Unit Films, each move expanded the definition of what an artist's business could be. It was inside G-Unit Films, in particular, that my passion for film and television truly took root. What I learned from those years is that the best work happens when you trust the talent completely and they trust you immensely. Together you build a strategy that amplifies who they already are, rather than reshaping them for the market. That philosophy is now foundational to how I work within ACA. We don't manufacture moments. We create the conditions for them.
Glamour: How do you balance your roles as COO of ACA while managing your personal venture, The Sitota Collection?
Yvette Gayle: I’ve stopped thinking of it as balance. There’s actually no such thing. There is always something that suffers when you try to balance. Instead I think of it as integration. The two worlds are simply two parts of who I am (and not the only 2 parts). Sitota is deeply personal and the brand has grown as I have. The brand was ignited by the adoption of my daughter Sitota from Ethiopia. That experience made a circle whole in such a meaningful way.
It’s my expression, my outlet, my grounding. Where ACA is about building global stages for others, Sitota is something quieter and entirely my own, rooted in family, in care, in ritual. It’s the kind of intention that doesn’t need an audience, although it needs like minded consumers. The two ventures feed off each other in ways I didn’t fully anticipate but have come to deeply appreciate. I remember being on tour with G Unit – usually 14 men in bullet proof vests and me. But they all wanted mazing candles to burn in there room. These hard core individuals. It made me laugh and appreciate they they too valued personal space. And I think it helped with the ladies!
Glamour: What lessons from the music industry have you found most valuable in the film and television space?
Yvette Gayle: The most transferable lesson is this: culture moves first, commerce follows. In music, we understood that you had to earn cultural relevance before you could monetize it. The same is true in film and television, perhaps even more so, because the investment cycle is longer and the risk is higher. The second lesson is about relationships. This industry, in every form, is built on trust. The people you treat well on the way up are the same people who open doors for you later. I've never forgotten that.
Glamour: How do you approach partnerships and collaborations to ensure they are both strategic and meaningful?
Yvette Gayle: My first questions always is does this serve the talent’s long term story or does it just serve the deal? A partnership that pays well but positions a client incorrectly detracts from the long term goal. Sometimes you have to consider a money grab, because it’s life and we have to deal with reality. But at ACA we look for alignment on three levels, creatibe cultural, and commercial. If a partner doesn’t understand the cultural weight of what our clients represent, we’d rather walk away and find someone who does. This approach was mind blowing to brands at times and hasn’t been easy walking that line. The most powerful partnerships are the ones where both sides are invested in each others vision. Those are collaborations that create something neither party could do alone.
Glamour: The Sitota Collection is a luxury brand that celebrates Black female entrepreneurship. What was the inspiration behind it?
Yvette Gayle: Sitota was born from a very personal need, to create something that felt like mine, in the fullest sense. Something rooted in my journey, made with care, and offered to women (and men) as an invitation to slow down and inhabit themselves more fully. It’s about creating ritual space for you to cleanse, nourish and scent your skin and surroundings. As a black woman who has spent her career in spaces where we often have to fight to be seen as the authority, there was something profoundly healing about building a brand from the ground up, in my own time… sourcing botanicals, formulating by hand, writing every word of the story myself.
And then moving it to a totally new continent to start over. But that re-start has been amazing as our botanical story grew with getting botanicals and honey from local farmlands. It deepened the brands connection to South Africa. We are a conscious African luxury brand made right here in Johannesburg. The luxury isn’t in the price point, It’s in the intention. And I think that resonates with women (and men) who are building extraordinary things and deserve non-toxic products that honour who they are and who they are becoming. It’s an amazing journey.
Glamour: What challenges have you faced in elevating African creative content to international platforms, and how have you overcome them?
Yvette Gayle: The most persistent challenge is perception, the assumption, still held in some rooms, that African content is niche or that it requires translation to travel. We overcome it the same way every time, with receipts, data, case studies, comparable titles, audience analytics, market size. We walk into every pitch prepared to dismantle that assumption before it can take hold.
The second challenge is infrastructure, financing, co-production frameworks, distribution relationships. We're building those methodically, one deal and one relationship at a time. ACA exists precisely to be that infrastructure for talent who shouldn't have to figure it out alone.
Glamour: What does being a charter member of Delta Sigma Theta in Southern Africa mean to you?
Yvette Gayle: One of the things I am most proud of that sits outside of my professional work is being one of the charter members of the Southern Africa Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated. For those who don't know Delta, and many people here don't, we are the largest African American women's organisation in the world. Over 350,000 college educated women, more than 1,000 chapters across the United States and internationally, founded in 1913 by 22 young Black women at Howard University who believed that their education came with a responsibility to serve.
What we do is not social. It is a service. Our work is grounded in five programmatic pillars: educational development, economic development, physical and mental health, political awareness and involvement, and international awareness and involvement. Every chapter shows up in its community with that framework and asks: what does this community need and how do we build toward it.
Bringing that to Southern Africa feels personally significant to me in ways that are hard to fully articulate. I have spent years watching this continent and understanding its potential, its complexity, and its people. To now be part of planting something here that connects Black college educated women across borders, that says we see this community we live in and we are committed to it long term, that is not a small thing. Delta has always gone where the work is. And there is extraordinary work being done here. One of the most meaningful experiences for me is when we do our yearly workshop on Menstrual Equity to the young girls at Kgololo Academy in Alexandria. It’s priceless.
Glamour: Looking ahead, what is your vision for Africa Creative Agency and the growth of African storytelling globally?
Yvette Gayle: My vision is an Africa Creative Agency that is not just recognised globally but essential globally. A place where the world's most significant platforms come to us, because they understand that if they want authentic African stories told with integrity, ACA is the partner on the ground who makes that possible. I want our talent to be walking into rooms as the standard, not the exception. And beyond the business, I want ACA to have contributed to a genuine shift in how the world receives African stories, not as curiosities, but as the centrepiece of the global creative conversation. We are building that, one project, one deal, one story at a time.
