Inside TikTok’s effort to open doors for its Black rising stars

At first, Kirby Dockery found the thought of joining TikTok overwhelming. TikTok released an apology last June to members of the Black creator community who felt “unsafe, unsupported, or suppressed” by the app, and vowed to take steps to improve Black creators’ experience on the app. When TikTok announced the incubator in January, the company said it wanted to “focus on nurturing and developing” the creators and help “open doors for them to reach new heights in their careers.” “One of the areas of feedback that we heard from the Black creator community was wanting more representation in the top creator cohort,” Kudzi Chikumbu, TikTok’s director of creator community, said in an interview. “However, many Black creators have told me their ultimate desire is not to be selected for a program of support because they’re a Black creator, but because they’re a good creator.” Making friends, and brand deals More than 3,000 creators applied to the program within 24 hours of when applications opened in mid-January. The structure of the program — including a biweekly assignment to produce six videos — helped 22-year-old Jesse Lago land his first Lago, a nursing student from Milwaukee, said he tends to be “very scared of money and business.” “When things start to get serious, I’m kind of like, ‘Oh, ooh.’ I started to panic,” said Lago, who posts under the handle @skinnty_.