Kendricks Thacker

Keni Thacker Bio

There are five types of thinkers: creative thinkers, analytical thinkers, intuitive thinkers, logical thinkers, and visionary thinkers. Keni Thacker has defied the belief that an individual can only be one of those types, and truly encompasses all five. He has committed his heart and soul to his tireless quest to level the playing field for diverse talent. Keni takes nothing and makes something out of it. While everyone sits around and talks (and talks and talks) about the lack of diversity, Keni does something about it. And not something small but something game-changing.

He single-handedly built solid campaigns for underserved communities while curating hard conversations around race and social understanding for J. Walter Thompson’s (now Wunderman Thompson) diversity and inclusion arm called Differenter from 2011 through 2015. He is also an award-winning influencer and diversity advocate devoted to outreach programs and mentorship.
.
In 2017, he was named as one of the 4A’s 100 People That Make Advertising Great. NV Magazine featured him as one of their Champions of Inclusion while also receiving a citation from the City of New York/Borough of Brooklyn for a long record of diversity, inclusion, and mentoring efforts in advertising in 2019.

In December of 2020, he was honored with the Bill Sharp Award for the Future of Advertising for his tenure of diversity work in the advertising industry from the Marcus Graham Project.

While recently in 2021 he was honored by the Advertising Club of New York with their Innovator Award, he was also named one of Adweeks 2021 Creative Visionary Award honorees as their Change Creator of the Year and Business In