As the media landscape continues to evolve, an innovative crop of entertainment industry professionals are using their platforms to change our relationship to how we consume entertainment.
Stephen Shaw and Jonathan Linden, co-CEOs of Round Room Live (RRL), and Isha Sesay, CEO of Areya Media, are leading the way, connecting audiences to experiences that entertain, illuminate and educate in new ways without sacrificing impactful storytelling.
Taking TV and culture where it’s never been
What do a former lawyer, a Rolling Stones roadie and “Baby Shark” have in common? A lot, which you’ll know if you’ve ever attended an arena show or exhibition put on by Stephen Shaw and Jonathan Linden, co-CEOs of Round Room Live.
After working together at live entertainment producer S2BN Entertainment, the two combined their years of expertise to create a world all their own. The tour and exhibition experience for brands like the Rolling Stones, Oprah Winfrey and Marvel and Linden’s global licensing experience and producer credentials for two of Barbra Streisand’s tours and Rock of Ages on Broadway would be the perfect recipe for success.
Thanks to their big-picture thinking, they’ve transformed the shows and songs kiddos see and hear on TVs and tablets into engaging live spectacles. As surprising as it may seem, they turned the 18-word viral sensational song “Baby Shark” into a 75-minute show seen by more than 300,000 families. Then, they proved that an on-stage reimagining of a TV show can rival the normal way we consume entertainment by taking everyone’s bespectacled friend in orange suspenders, Blippi, from behind a screen to a full-on musical.
The duo’s events aren’t just for kids, however. Family-friendly offerings like The Formula 1 Exhibition appeal to all ages, while those in search of powerful social justice and global advocacy installations can find it in Mandela: The Official Exhibition, created in partnership with The Royal House of Mandela. The exhibition, which tours internationally, examines the legacy of the human rights icon with personal effects and objects not previously seen outside of South Africa. A past exhibit, Tupac Shakur: Wake Me When I’m Free, used technology and artifacts from Shakur’s personal archives as a way to dive deeper into the activism, music and art he created.
Shaw says RRL’s approach to live events is rooted in storytelling, cultural expression and emotional connection. He points to the Mandela and Shakur exhibitions as powerful examples of how live experiences can engage audiences in critical social issues.
“These exhibitions are designed not only to celebrate cultural icons but also to illuminate the struggles, triumphs and legacies that shaped them,” he shares. “By bringing these stories to life through immersive environments, archival content and emotionally resonant narratives, we aim to foster reflection, dialogue and understanding…. It’s about creating spaces where people of all ages and backgrounds can come together to learn, feel and connect with something larger than themselves.”
Given the sheer volume of families who attend their events and exhibitions across the world, one might wonder if the duo foresees a shift from screens as a main source of entertainment to watching living, breathing actors, singers, and dancers recreating something that is one-dimensional.
“Absolutely,” Shaw says, noting that they have seen a clear cultural shift.
“In an increasingly digital world, there’s something uniquely powerful about being in a physical space, surrounded by other people, watching stories unfold in real time,” he says, adding that “people want to feel something. They want to connect—not just with content, but with each other, with history, with emotion and with the world around them. That’s what we strive to deliver.”
Bringing the African diaspora into the light
Connecting people with content, each other and the world is something RRL has mastered with their live events and exhibitions, but Isha Sesay is equally committed to doing similar work through a different medium.
In 2021, the former CNN international news anchor became CEO of OkayMedia, now Areya Media (AM), a multimedia company that amplifies voices across the global Black and African community and is the parent company of Okayplayer and OkayAfrica, platforms known for their culturally driven narratives.
Sesay’s passion for creating impactful storytelling that advances underrepresented voices is a skill that earned the UK-born, Sierra Leone-raised journalist a prestigious Peabody Award a decade ago for groundbreaking work—including breaking the story of the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, Nigeria.
Since becoming CEO, Sesay has stewarded the evolution of Okayplayer with the Webby Award-winning podcast, The Almanac of Rap. Hosted by rapper and hip-hop expert Donwill, episodes are part conversation, part history lesson and part entertainment—featuring influential artists, producers and those steeped in the rich history of hip-hop. Sesay considers it a sister offering to Okayplayer’s Afrobeats Intelligence podcast with Joey Akan, an award-winning journalist Sesay says has deep relationships in the music industry and with the biggest stars in Afrobeats.
Sesay says AM’s mission is to “make sure that every corner of the world sees African talent, sees our efforts, appreciates our voices and our stories.”
Though Sesay was born in the UK and now lives in the U.S., she lived in Sierra Leone between the ages of 7 to 16 before moving back to London. It’s an experience she says had a profound effect on her view of the world.
“For a large part of my youth, teenage years and maybe even up until my early 30s, I don’t think I fully appreciated… the blessing of having moved around and existed in such different cultures and what those experiences have meant for me and the person that I am today,” she says.
“I’m so grateful that all three of those cultures are part of my background, but especially so that I spent my formative years in Sierra Leone in West Africa, which, for my entire life… has been sort of in the bottom tenth of the world’s poorest countries.”
She points out that Sierra Leone is “still battling forces of misogyny and great gender inequities,” noting how this has shaped her view on gender dynamics and how she moves through the world. “I refuse to be held back by those same forces,” she says.
When Sesay joined OkayMedia, she deliberately changed the name to Areya, which means “sunshine” in Yoruba, one of the largest single languages in sub-Saharan Africa.
She says the company experienced some turmoil before she joined, shrouding it in a bit of darkness. To her, it was just begging for a fresh start, and a name change was a powerful way of doing that.
“When I came to find out that [Areya] meant ‘sunshine,’ it felt so right, given where the company had been and where I was trying to take it,” she says. “Beyond that… I felt it spoke to a bigger point of what we’re trying to do around Black culture and Black stories and voices and move us from the margins, from the shadows and the corners, to center stage and to the light.”
For Sesay, sunshine is synonymous with joy, something she feels is desperately needed right now. “We need so much more Black joy right now because things are tough, things are frightening, things feel dark. And so to have that as your mission, to combat that and to bring light, that’s the work I want to be doing.”
Photo courtesy of Isha Sesay
