Meet a Changemaker Behind the Gucci Changemakers Initiative

When social media lit up in June with black squares symbolizing racial justice and antiracist solidarity, Gucci opted out. Today, the company unveiled what it has been working on instead: an expansion of its $6.5 million Gucci Changemakers grants and scholarships program.

The 2019 launch of Changemakers also followed internet furor over a blackface balaclava and a subsequent meeting in Harlem between Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri and Dapper Dan, who joined the Changemakers advisory council, along with poet Cleo Wade, activist DeRay McKesson, will.i.am, and others. “This does not end with Gucci,” Dan assured social justice skeptics at the time. “It begins with Gucci.”

Indeed, the turnaround has been radical. Today’s announcement of an expanded program for a new season of Gucci Changemakers applications was a thorough centering of marginalized talent, from the work of Justin Payne, a Black florist in Atlanta who has worked with Beyoncé, to that of Daquan Oliver, a Black programmer in Brooklyn. (Applications for the second round of the Gucci North America Changemakers Impact Fund and Scholarship Program opened today.)

And as 2020’s intersecting crises intensified, Gucci responded, adding monthly mentorship-driven internal town hall meetings for scholars in March and $10,000 rapid-response grants for non-profit organizations in June. Three of its scholars were commissioned to produce art for Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote project. And its nonprofit grantees—focused in 12 cities (Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toronto, and Washington, D.C)—expanded their scope to address health equity and wellness (on top of arts & culture, education, and social justice).