Dean Okai Snr

I'm the Chairman of SigmaCarta, an end-to-end streaming platform specifically aimed at a global Black male audience (Vice for a Black male pallet), ranging from 1-hour unscripted formats to 30-minute dramas and eventually a slate of micro-budget features.

I initially studied film but have had a varied business career, owning and operating creative businesses to high street retail and training through not-for-profit entities over 30 years.

My last commercial business of 11 years with the same three staff enabled me to earn a steady income as a men's high street clothing retailer, employ my advocacy aspirations and engage in creative projects at the same time.

I closed that store during the hight of Covid due the lock down rather than take out a bounce-back loan. This lead me to establish an advocacy organisation to advance the work I had been doing when I owned my store.

However, without the luxury of my till to underwrite my work, I was in the same position as many other grant dependent organisations, only with a history of being an aggressive and uncompromising advocate where it would have paid to go along to get along.

I'm best placed to lead in commercial business from the backroom coordinating the action by protecting my troops and our ongoing concerns. SigmaCarta came to me as a download that allows me to bring the totality of my intellectual capital and experience to the table over the next decade.

SigmaCarta will produce intelligent and entertaining 1-hour unscripted men's transformational outcome formats, ranging from fatherhood, entrepreneurialism, marriage, personal development and spirituality to 30-minute cinematic calibre dramas.

Over the first 12 months, we also intend to establish a micro-budget feature film slate fund to give volume to Black male stories that have yet to be told. The hero's story is a theme that runs through all of our content and ties it together for our global audience for SigmaCarta to stand out as an aspirational brand.