#WhatRUMadeOf
Context
#WhatRUMadeOf was a seven-part Instagram Reels series produced for Rutgers University's main account during Black History Month 2023, featuring six Black students in honest conversation about family, heritage, faith, and what it means to define Blackness on their own terms.
Approach
The intention was to give the students a space to unpack what they were feeling. Traditional BHM campaigns celebrate the same "first Black person ever" stats every year, and that framing's dated. I wanted to actually get to know six Black Rutgers students. They were Caribbean, African, African American, mixed, immigrant, second-gen, each with a completely different relationship to Blackness and where it came from. The year had run from Beyoncé's Renaissance and Wakanda Forever's tribute to Chadwick Boseman to Dobbs, the Buffalo massacre, and Tyre Nichols killed in the weeks before we recorded, all on top of a sustained COVID backdrop where Black life had been publicly contested. The bet was that six honest conversations would carry the argument that Blackness isn't a monolith without anyone having to say so.
Execution
I held four roles on this campaign: videographer, video editor, social media manager, copywriter. The shoots were one-on-one. Just me, the student, a camera, and the four questions. No crew, no production assistants, no second cameraman watching from behind a monitor. The choice was deliberate. Six Black students sitting down to answer real questions about identity needed a small room, so I kept the room small.
Each student got the same four questions and was free to take them anywhere. I cut their answers into individual Reels with their own pacing and emotional shape, then wrote captions that pulled the strongest lines forward without flattening what they actually said. The campaign opened with a trailer built around a bell hooks audio quote, and the six student Reels rolled out across Black History Month on Rutgers' main account.
#WhatRUMadeOf ran alongside Professionally Black, the faculty-and-staff Rutgers Today story I photographed during the same month. Students on one side, the professionals who teach and work alongside them on the other.
Results
Across seven posts, #WhatRUMadeOf pulled 186.9K views, 5.9K likes, and 295 comments on Rutgers' main Instagram account. Tiffany Bennett and Lilian Agu both cleared 33K views. Dylan Poku and Jacob Ajayi held around 25K and 23K. Every student's video held above 16K.
What landed was the variation itself. Lilian's video about learning legwork and embracing her Nigerian masquerades drew a different response than Tiffany's about Black American identity and DOS lineage. Dylan's portrait of his Ghanaian mother's grit hit differently than Jacob's case for unapologetic Black individuality. Each student's video found its own audience, and the spread proved what the campaign was built to argue: there's no single Black student at Rutgers, no single Black experience to flatten into one graphic.
The format worked. Six honest one-on-one conversations on the main feed of a major public university. The students said what they meant. The audience showed up. The simplest move was the most useful one. Sit down with someone, ask them about themselves, let them talk.