Stewart Cornelius opens up about his past life at morehouse college and his near-decade-long job at Twitter.

Stewart Cornelius Opens Up About His Past Life at Morehouse College, Earlier Days in Brooklyn, The Evolution and Advantages of Social Media, His Role in Entertainment Partnerships at Twitter, And How He Plans to Grow His Personal Brand Throughout the Rest of The Year.

Stew Cornelius

The world of tech is growing rapidly right before our eyes. We’ve experienced so many alterations in how we use social media that in most cases, people would say it’s stained how we’ve been able to meet and communicate with the rest of the world. Now, although social media has had its fair share of issues due to its misuse and overconsumption of information, these platforms have changed a lot of people’s lives for the better. Over the course of the pandemic, we’ve seen a huge jump in the number of entrepreneurs who’ve made millions through online businesses and utilizing all of the well-known platforms. Twitter has been the one platform that has gotten it right most of the time when it comes to the creators and entrepreneurs as well as staying informed on what’s happening in the world. After spending nearly ten years at the almost sixteen-year-old company, Senior Manager of Entertainment Partnerships Stewart Cornelius knows the ins and outs of Twitter all too well.

The Morehouse graduate has had one of the most interesting career paths since getting his foot through the door at Twitter. Despite having multiple jobs in sales, Stewart was surrounded by the world of tech very early thanks to his family who was very tech-savvy. “My mom was a huge lover of pictures and photography,” Stew says. “My uncle was very involved in tech as well. I remember he had a Sega CD that was crazy. That was the moment when I realized that’s what I was supposed to do.”

I had the pleasure of catching up Stew via Zoom. We talked about his upbringing in Brooklyn, transitioning to the Maryland school district as a teen, how tech and social media played a role in his young adulthood, college life at Morehouse, his career at Twitter, and how he plans to expand his personal brand throughout the rest of this year.

Read the full interview below. (This interview has been edited for clarity purposes.)

1 - First and foremost, how are you feeling today?

I’m probably at the most stable place I’ve been in in the last two years. I love that you do this and ask this question because this is something I’ve been asking myself for about four years. I’ve been going to therapy for six years now. I like doing these personal, internal check-ins. To ask yourself constantly “How do you really feel today?” is a life-changing habit to have.

2 - You’re originally from Brooklyn but moved to Maryland. Talk to me about your brief experience here as a child and then moving out to Maryland.

I was born in Brooklyn Hospital Center right near Dekalb Avenue and I grew up in East Flatbush. I had very different dynamics growing up because my parents are from Ghana. I lived in a predominantly Black neighborhood so I was straddling the fence of these two similar, but very different groups of people. At home, I’m being raised how my parents were being raised back in Ghana. Outside, everything I know about pop culture and life is being taught to me by Caribbean-Americans or Black Americans. I’ve always felt like I was from these two different universes and as I got a bit older I did my best to try and bring them together.

I moved to Maryland right before my mom passed away. I had a tough time with that. Going to school after one of your biggest cheerleaders has moved on is something I don’t wish on anyone, but thankfully, I realized that all of those sacrifices would be for nothing if I didn’t continue on this path of everything she and I talked about. I really took school seriously there.

3 - You work in tech now, but what were some of your earlier introductions to the world of tech.

It’s interesting. I always say Black millennial kids are tech-focused because we grew up with the best video game systems. We were all very interested in how this little box brought us all of this enjoyment. I was definitely one of those kids. I was fortunate enough to have GameBoy, SEGA Genesis, and everything else. It intrigued me how this stuff was put together. Also, I was the person in my family who would fix things. If the TV wasn’t working people in my family would be like “Where’s Stew?” Not to mention, as a young kid I always read about tech. I subscribed to Nintendo Power back in the day. Coming from an African household, if you weren’t going to be a lawyer or a doctor they didn’t want to hear anything else about your future, but tech was always at the top of my mind growing up.

4 - We know that certain places throughout the country catch on to things faster than other places in the country. How was tech, specifically social media, viewed during your time in college? How did that help shape you as a young man?

So I’ve got three major touchpoints relating to this. I worked at AT&T in college so I had that experience as like my first real tech job. I had my background in Sears where I can tell you the specifics of a TV whether it was a DLP, plasma, LCD, LED, etc. All of this shit I still remember and this was over a decade ago. Second, I grew up in a family that was very tech-savvy. My mom was a huge lover of pictures and photography. My uncle was very involved in tech as well. I remember he had a Sega CD that was crazy. That was the moment when I realized that’s what I was supposed to do. Lastly, Twitter became my norm when I got into college. We used to use it to exchange info about professors and classes. I took a crazy class called Business Policy so we really used to use Twitter to exchange notes. All of these things put me in a position to enjoy social media and tech for what it was because at this time I was still a young man trying to figure it out like everyone else.

5 - You attended Morehouse as a business student. What do you think were some of the biggest takeaways from your years of college?

I had a conversation with a few Morehouse homies over the weekend and we were talking about this exact thing. If we had a teacher that was crazy hard, we would send out a group message letting everyone know we were in the library from whatever time to make sure we get everything done to pass this class. I had never seen anything like that. In most colleges, there are like five people in most of these AP and honor classes. At Morehouse, there’s a lot of you everywhere in most of these classes. A lot of what was happening, even until this day twelve years later, no one wants to be the guy in the friend group that fell off. We’re constantly asking the homies about their businesses and such and trying to stay updated on what they’re currently doing. My ultimate takeaway has been the sense of brotherhood. There’s this sort of village morale at Morehouse.

6 - You’ve had a variety of jobs from Verizon, Turner Broadcasting, and Hulu. How did that experience prep you for getting into Twitter?

My journey to Twitter was pretty interesting. I left Morehouse with a marketing degree and I minored in finance. I wanted to hit the ground running, but at the time tech was in a weird place. You were only really looking to work for your legacy tech companies like Intel, Sony, HP, and maybe even Apple and Microsoft. The goal was to just find a job and then figure it out later. That might’ve been a detriment to our generation, but we realized later that we don’t have to stick it out with a job if we’re really not interested.

One of my brothers from Morehouse called me and told me about a position at Turner Broadcasting. He knew I had sales experience so I went and applied. They interviewed me and I got the job. I was there for two years as a Senior Account Service Representative. Basically, a lot of key entries. I was entering in commercial run times and it was pretty tedious. From there, I applied to Hulu. Hulu was this liberal tech company and I knew what it was going into it. I walked in with a presentation that was bounded and everything about my plans and the strategies I put together for the team. The manager looked at me and said “I don’t know if we can’t give you this job.” I credit Turner for my over-preparedness. I spent nearly two years at Hulu. I searched up a job at Twitter and the role as an Account Manager for Tech and Telco sectors. I saw it and it clicked. I worked at AT&T when I was in school in Atlanta. I knew Telco very well. I walked into the interview with a tablet with all my notes and such. Off the random, he asked me what the current stock price was. I told him and he instantly said to me “You’re my guy.” I’ve been there ever since.

7 - What does your job in Entertainment Partnerships at Twitter entail?

I manage a team that focuses on providing solutions to highly influential people and celebrities, which we call V.I.T’s (Very Important Tweeters) on the platform. We help with assisting them in utilizing their platform better on Twitter. For example, we linked up with Saweetie and did fan tweets with her so she can gain more fans and talk about upcoming events for her and her brand. We did the Fast 10 situation as well which was cool because they really talk and engage like a real family, no pun intended. We do a lot of things with sports figures like Kevin Durant and Draymond Green. So we do what we can to make sure the V.I.T.’s are engaging with their audience and utilizing their platform to the best of their ability.

8 - How do you think Twitter has impacted our culture from a creative standpoint?

There are a couple of things I can say about this. Think about the stuff that’s happening in Cuba right now. A lot of us wouldn’t know about it if it wasn’t for Twitter. How fast news travels, especially within the Black community, is amazing. You look at all of these different artists such as Ravie B. and Joshua Kissi who are prominent voices on Twitter because it’s so easy to share your content on the platform. With one click of a button, your work is uploaded the way it is. With one retweet, your work can be seen by millions of people. I love Twitter because I feel like every time I get on the platform I learn something new. Even if it’s just the weather, I feel like I learn something new. I love the residual benefit that Twitter has. If I check my feed three times a day and walk into a meeting, there a very few conversations I can’t have because I can gain access to the info on my timeline.

Also, we continue to build Twitter based on user behavior. Everything we do is based on the user experience such as expanding our characters and adding the tweet thread where now people can have cohesive and connected tweets based on a topic. I’ll be the first to tell you we don’t get it right all the time, but what we do is all based on the experience of the user. For the reasons I just named, I enjoy working for the company. We’ve always been user-first and now it’s important we put the creative and entrepreneur first.

9 - In your opinion, what do you think are some of the pros and cons of how social media has evolved and continues to play a role in our daily lives?

You can’t open yourself up to criticism on Twitter. That’s not really a thing. Social media in general just has become a mirror of who some people are in real life. But on the real, we don’t know the lasting effects of us looking at a screen all day. No one knows where we are with all of this. We’re still trying to figure it out, but in the meantime, I think we can all agree that staring at a screen for 24 hours is probably not going to be good for us in the future. I’m sure there’s a study that shows the correlation between the over-exposure of information that social media provides and the increased rate of therapy. So, we’re not just talking about physically impairing us, but logically as well. Although I do work at Twitter and enjoy it, I can tell you the last four years with “45” gave me anxiety. If Joe Biden does nothing else, he’s giving me a good night's sleep. We’re also losing the basic elements of communication. People don’t know how to exist anymore in the same space without reaching for their phones. After a year of being in the house, we should be excited to speak to someone in person. So for all the good that social media does, we have to learn to manage ourselves.

10 - Twitter has implemented a lot of new features to help amplify the voices of entrepreneurs and creatives. What other ways do you think Twitter will contribute to the creative world?

This is a huge thing for us. Jack Dorsey cares a lot about music and entrepreneurship. He’s a part of Tidal and Square, his company. I think the biggest thing for Twitter is finding those ways to help the creative. During the pandemic, artists weren’t touring, actors and actresses weren’t shooting. We asked ourselves “What can we do to help that community?” We wanted to be able to help the artists connect with their fans a little bit better while also being able to make money. With Spaces, the idea is that there are amazing people on Twitter. You can tell a lot about somebody based on their Twitter profile and what they tweet and retweet. We’ve never really had the voices to go with it. Again, that was created out of user experience because we know how important audio is. We knew if we gave people the ability to speak and join in on things their favorite tweeters or celebrities are talking about, it would take off. We’ve had KD jump on and talk about his brand, 35 Ventures. We recently had a room where Jay-Z and Jack were talking about a few things. These things are dope, but important at the same time.

But, to get back to the question, a lot of brands are going to start building their product based on the behavioral aspect of the platform. OnlyFans really started this. The subscription-based model, like streaming and such, is going to create this sort of fragmented situation for a lot of companies. For example, the idea that you’ll get paid more here if you do it exclusively exists. Brands like Twitter have been built on community, IP, and talent. A lot of companies are going to have to follow suit and do the same thing, but also build a product that supports that. These platforms are going to be forced to focus on the creator because they have to. So, going forward, there’s going to be a lot of money put into the product and a lot more money put into the creator.

11 - What’s your true definition of success?

For me, I’m doing something that I love that benefits myself and the community that I come from. The other thing I would say is I know myself to be a connector. As long as I connect the most people to make important things happen for our community, I’m satisfied. My biggest fear is being in a position to not do these things for the community.

12 - What can we expect from Stewart Cornelius as it pertains to your personal brand and your role at Twitter?

For me, it’s going to be stabilizing again and doing what I’ve been doing. It’s easy to forget about self-care now that people are outside, but now it should be more important than it ever was. I’m working on a few things such as my personal marketing consulting firm and a podcast venture that I’m focused on as well. That’s my plan for the next six months. Also, I’m hoping to get back to Ghana soon.

Follow Stew on Instagram and Twitter to stay updated on everything related to his next move.