Kudzi Chikumbu is a media technology executive, speaker and creator. He serves as the Director of Creator Community at TikTok where he is responsible for building the creator community through experiential creator marketing, partnerships and scaled communition all while ensuring that the platorm is fostering a diverse and inclusive ecosystem. Kudzi's passion comes from his background as a creator where he learned how video content can help build community, amplify diverse voices and change the landscape of representation in entertainment. Kudzi has been at TikTok for over 4 years and has helped develop content strategies for some of the platform's biggest creators. As a marketer, Kudzi has launched experiential events for creators on the platform from the Event Marketer Award winning #MakeBlackHistory creator summit in 2020, TikTok VidCon debut event in 2021, virtual experiences for Latinx Heritage Month in 2020.
Kudzi has launched initiatives to foster diversity such as TikTok for Black Creatives in partnership with MACRO, the annual #MakeBlackHistory app-wide campaign to celebrate Black History Month, the TikTok Trailblazer List to highlight voices in diverse communities and the TikTok Creator Diverse Collective.
Kudzi was born in Zimbabwe and grew up in South Africa. He began his business career as an accountant and management consultant at Deloitte Consulting in South Africa, after which he enrolled at Stanford Graduate School of Business for his MBA. He then moved into the world of online video at TikTok. Kudzi was named as one of Fortune's 40 Under 40 in 2020, won the ADCOLOR Innovator Award in 2020 and was named one of the Next Gen Execs by The Hollywood Reporter in 2019.