How To Find Your Place In AI & Tech, According To The Former Beats CMO & Apple VP

With all the rapid advancements in technology and the race to be the next global disruptor through AI technology, Omar Johnson, former CMO of Beats by Dre and Vice President of Apple, is positioning himself to be the next leader with his groundbreaking AI technology, promising to redefine marketing insights and bridge technology and culture for more authentic brand connections.

Øpus Intelligence, an advanced generative AI technology, provides marketers with more nuanced consumer insights that move beyond traditional demographics to focus on behaviors and emotional motivators. This shift towards understanding cultural and behavioral patterns is essential in supporting entrepreneurs, building enterprise and global relationships for the Black community, empowering economic revitalization, strengthening networks worldwide, and can be the missing piece to the puzzle of creating rapid sustainable growth across industries. Technology like Øpus Intelligence offers a competitive advantage by allowing businesses to connect more deeply with diverse audiences, driving growth and sustainability in an increasingly interconnected world.

Through this new system, customers will be able to use Øpus Intelligence to combine time-tested marketing playbooks, with emerging media trends, audience personas, and real-time product sentiment to create on-brand marketing campaigns. Øpus was born out of a passion to build the world’s first full-stack AI marketing platform, building an operating system for cultural marketing, combining AI scale and power with deep expert insight to help any organization, creative, or athlete build authentic, impactful campaigns.

After discovering Øpus Intelligence and learning more about it, I was reminded of many of the barriers around tech that deter some from innovating, often perpetuated by stereotypes, and the extraordinary and less discussed tech accomplishments that have come from Black technologists. A few less spoken-of Black inventors who have created many of the foundations that AI and technology are built upon include Dr. Mark Dean, who co-invented the personal computer; Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, whose work led to advancements in telecommunications and wireless technology; George Carruthers, whose innovations in space exploration technology helped further our understanding of the cosmos; Dr. Phillip Emeagwali, whose contributions to computational fluid dynamics and parallel computing were instrumental in the development of supercomputing systems, laying a foundation for AI applications like DeepSeek and ChatGPT; and Dr. Valerie Thomas, whose invention of the illusion transmitter advanced data visualization and 3D imaging technologies, influencing modern computing systems. These contributions, among many others, have had a profound impact on the development of modern technology and AI.

According to McKinsey’s analysis of Fortune 500 executives, Black individuals make up 12% of the U.S. workforce but only 8% of employees in tech jobs. Even more striking, just 3% of technology executives in the C-suite are Black. While this gap is expected to widen in the coming years, it also creates a powerful opportunity for growth and innovation. The under-representation in tech opens the door for new voices and fresh perspectives to drive change, compete, and shape the future of the industry, and I thought it would be beneficial to provide an interview with Øpus’s founder that can offer wisdom and strategic guidance.

This interview was inspired by the need to provide helpful insights for those looking to break into tech, navigating the pressures of staying true to themselves while confronting expectations to conform to trends or uphold the status quo.

In my conversation with Mr. Omar Johnson, who has extensive experience in marketing and leadership within the realm of advanced AI technology, we explored key leadership principles and actionable advice to help readers find their own path and make a lasting impact in the rapidly changing world of AI and technology.

Use your talents as an equalizer to bridge gaps and drive progress.

Q. What has been the most significant barrier you’ve faced, despite your professional success as a Black leader in technology, and how did you overcome this to succeed?

(O.J.)Honestly, I’ve found being a Black leader in technology easier than being a Black leader in business and marketing. Throughout my career, I have often been the only leader of color in the room. I know what it feels like to not always feel fully accepted in an environment and to work in settings where, despite being an insider, you feel like an outsider. But the magic of technology is that it’s one of the few places in business where the place you come from doesn’t matter—what matters is whether you speak the language of the machine and have the creativity to unlock the magic of the machine.

People absolutely face challenges in corporations based on their race, their gender, their sexual preference, and other factors, but in tech, those challenges are outweighed by their ability to speak the language of code. A kid anywhere in the world today can build an app or website and launch it almost anywhere. AI has the potential to open the door even wider: LLMs allow people who don’t speak perfect English to communicate their ideas clearly and precisely—in English or any other language. That potential unlocks previously inaccessible rooms and opportunities, to the benefit of everyone. For the athletes and artists we’re working with, technology is helping to eliminate some of the limitations I experienced in those rooms. It’s an equalizer. It can balance the power of information to help people who need it the most so that they do not have to struggle to be in the room.

Redefine AI and tech through real perspectives and your vision.

Q: How can Black professionals leverage their unique lived experiences and perspectives to bring innovation and more value to the AI and tech sectors?

(O.J.) AI is inherently biased. Its training materials, measurement systems, and developers all have bias, which the AI adopts. As Black professionals, we have an understanding and experience with bias that we can leverage to build tools and help businesses navigate the bias otherwise inherent in these products. We have also become proficient at using AI—querying it, iterating on it, and drawing useful responses from it—in ways that recognize and minimize its biases.

There is a competitive advantage for Black professionals who can see the world slightly differently than a rank-and-file engineer from Silicon Valley. Major LLMs largely draw their training data from the internet, introducing all manner of biases. So detecting that bias and innovating ways to solve it can be an important part of our work—and built into the products we develop. We have a role to play in allowing AI to see the full spectrum of humanity (and their markets). We can push the entire industry to do better.

Find your niche, lock in and remain organized.

Q: What strategies can Black entrepreneurs use to build strong, impactful products that stand out in the competitive AI and tech landscape?

(O.J.) That being said, quality is a broad term that is hard to operationalize. So I focus on “FABRIC”—Fast” , Addictive, Bold, Rewarding, Innovative, and Community—with my team. Kobie Fuller of Upfront and I pioneered that term together to guide work that rises above the noise.

Fast. Everything from the architecture to the workflow of your teams and your product should move in a few seconds. At Øpus Intelligence, every time my engineers bring me a new tool or iteration, I ask how we can make this output happen with fewer clicks or steps. By evolving steps away, you increase efficiency and subsequently the quality of output. That isn’t to say skip crucial checks or steps, but to consider crucial versus duplicative steps and consider where you can combine. On the client side, the faster and simpler a product is to use, the fewer customers you will lose in the on-boarding, and the more likely customers are to turn to it.

Affecting. The ability to keep a user engaged over time, day after day after day. When you are creating your tech, each step and output should be evaluated through the lens of “Does this keep a user engaged moment after moment?” Many of our peers in technology forget about emotion. What do people feel when they use your product? Emotion is what keeps or prevents people from coming back. Keeping tech positive, fun, and enjoyable will keep them coming back for more.

Bold. Be transformative. Zig when a category is “zagging”. Consider the way things are done and see if you can flip them on their head.

Rewarding. Going back to emotion, users should feel a sense of accomplishment or reward when they use your product. Beyond the feeling, identify a clear, simple, and crucial value that you provide to the consumer. For example, Calendly provides an emotion of accomplishment each time a meeting is booked and achieves that booking with a fraction of the effort compared to the normal back-and-forth of scheduling emails. Emotion combined with value output will keep your product off the chopping block regardless of how tight the budget gets.

Integrated. This goes beyond integrating the front end to the back end. Think about how your product integrates into the customer’s daily life. Does it fit seamlessly? Talk with other applications? Or does it force them to add another step to their routine? Think about habit stacking (if you haven’t read Atomic Habits, I highly recommend it). Like any other habit, the more smoothly your product integrates with their existing habits, the more likely it is to become part of their routine.

Community. Nothing happens in a silo. Approach your work as part of something greater, because it is, whether you see it or not. By considering the whole and how you fit into it, you will be able to better understand your user and achieve their needs.

I do this by building a community and leveraging their unique thoughts, views, and backgrounds to build a better product.

Create something high-functioning.

Q: What tips would you give to Black entrepreneurs aspiring to lead in the AI and tech industries, especially in navigating systemic challenges?

(O.J.) My bottom line advice is to get the technology right. A great user interface is crucial, but focus on building the backend first to make sure that you deliver on your promises before getting too swept up in the aesthetics.

It’s also essential to include everyone—from engineers to marketers to non-technical partners. A diversity of backgrounds leads to a diversity of viewpoints that make the tech better and more functional for customers in the real world.

Lastly, be an early adopter. AI is here to stay, and natives will advance more quickly. Pay attention to what is happening in the industry and invest in upskilling and reskilling. While we are all natives now, if you don’t keep growing, the industry will pass you by.

Practice honesty in every step and stay true to your values.

Q: What advice would you give to the next generation of Black leaders entering the AI and tech space to help them maintain authenticity while scaling their influence, products, or services?

(O.J.) In my opinion, authenticity has been overused and adopted to the point no one really knows what it means anymore. Instead of chasing “authenticity,” focus on being honest. With each product, service, or commentary you launch, consider if it truly aligns with your brand and values. If it doesn’t, don’t do it. Because consumers can and will be able to tell.

At Beats, we were lucky to have Dr. Dre as a founder who had such a strong personal brand. But as a tech company, it forced us to be honest in our marketing and do things that no other technology company before us would do. Even though our product was leading the industry technologically, Dr. Dre would never talk like an engineer or industrial designer. He talked honestly about his love of music and his love of great headphones to listen to music, and that allowed us to authentically connect with everyone in the world, not just the consumers in the headphones or tech space. Honesty is how we grew Beats from a $20 million company to a $3 billion dollar company in four years.

As for advice, I’ve relied on one critical skill in my transition to AI; the ability to structure your thoughts. My process involves three habits that I practice daily:

Create transparency between what you do as a human and what you want the tech to do. The tech should be inseparable from its use-case.
Clearly communicate your vision and your goals. This may sound easy, but offering clarity is the greatest virtue when in the work of marketing, tech, or AI.
Build a structure and follow it. This is true at the big-picture strategic level and at the daily tactical level. Process helps eliminate uncertainty, increase scalability, and create space for creativity.

While the tech industry evolves, Black entrepreneurs are well-positioned to drive innovation and advance in AI. By incorporating the right strategies and advice from other leaders and mentors in this space, we can work together to influence the future of technology and create groundbreaking new services and products.