Yara Shahidi, ‘Queer Eye’s’ Karamo Brown, Andrew Yang Join Verizon Livestreaming Event on Social Change
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Verizon has assembled a lineup of celebs and activists for its inaugural Citizen Verizon Assembly next week, tapping Yara Shahidi, Karamo Brown, Andrew Yang, Ben & Jerry’s CEO Matthew McCarthy and more for a livestreaming event discussing strategies for driving social change.
The July 28 event is part of the telco’s corporate-responsibility initiative committing to a carbon-neutral footprint by 2035, a new job-skills training program and a digital-inclusion effort.
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The free livestreaming Citizen Verizon Assembly will take place Tuesday, July 28, from 5-6 p.m. ET, available on Yahoo Finance and Verizon’s Twitter account.
The virtual event will include a discussion on building a future that’s inclusive, moderated by Karamo Brown (Netflix’s “Queer Eye”) with “Grown-ish” actress and activist Yara Shahidi (pictured above); Geoff Canada, educator and school-reform activist; and Meredith Walker, co-founder and executive director of Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls.
A CEO panel on businesses taking action on social issues will include Verizon chief Hans Vestberg; Matthew McCarthy, CEO of Ben & Jerry’s; David Heath, co-founder and CEO of Bombas; Mindy Grossman, CEO of Weight Watchers; and Enrique Lores, CEO of HP. The session will be moderated by Ibram X Kendi, bestselling author and founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University.
Closing out the event will be a keynote delivered by Andrew Yang, former Democratic presidential contender, author and entrepreneur.
The event will be livestreamed on on Yahoo Finance (and the Yahoo Finance channels on Verizon’s FiOS, Roku and Samsung Smart TVs), as well as via @Verizon on Twitter and the Yahoo homepage.
According to Verizon, it’s the first in a series of planned Citizen Verizon Assemblies in the future.
Those events, leveraging Verizon’s media distribution outlets, are part of Citizen Verizon. Under the overarching initiative, the company has pledged to: provide 10 million youths with digital skills training and 1 million small businesses with resources to help them thrive in the digital economy by 2030; become carbon-neutral in its operations by 2035 by reducing emissions, investing in renewable energy and purchasing carbon offsets; and prepare 500,000 individuals for “jobs of the future” by 2030 through skills training.
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