Yla Eason

Yla is an award-winning educator and entrepreneur who is widely credited with pioneering the ethnic toy market in mass-market stores. As an Assistant Professor of Professional Practice at Rutgers University, she focuses on multicultural marketing, nonprofit marketing, and the use of AI in marketing.

She received an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Fitchburg State University, where she was the commencement speaker in 2024. She has earned numerous awards and honors for founding and growing Olmec Toys, a multicultural toy company, to $5 million, including an honorary Ph.D. from Bloomfield College and the Business Enterprise Trust Award from President Bill Clinton in 1996.

She was the former Director of Learning and Development for R/GA, a digital advertising agency, and for the Center for Excellence in Advertising at Howard University. She previously was a Lecturer at the Business School at Medgar Evers College, City University of New York (CUNY), and taught e-Commerce for CUNY’s School of Professional Studies.

Prior to her academic career, Yla was a journalist, having worked for The Tulsa Tribune, Dayton Daily News, New York Times, and The Chicago Tribune. Before starting her toy company, she was the financial editor for Standard & Poor’s institutional investor publication.

In 2020, she received the Women Leaders in Innovation Award from the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and the Education Award from the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey. She was the 2026 keynote speaker at the Morristown Hispanic American Chamber of Commerce’s 5th Annual Women’s Empowerment Breakfast and was featured in MSNBC’s Into America podcast. Eason, a Tulsa, Oklahoma native, resides in Montclair, New Jersey.