TBS Awards $25K To Four Grand Prize Winners Of TBS HBCU Cash Out

Not long ago, TBS announced that they were taking steps to financially empower recent graduates of HBCUs. To do so, the network announced its TBS HBCU Cash Out program, which awarded $25,000 each to four lucky HBCU graduates.

The money, the network said, was designed to help alleviate student loan debt for Black students. The network chose $25,000 as a prize amount because of a recent study released by the U.S. Department of Education’s White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans.

According to the report, “Black college graduates have nearly $25,000 more student loan debt: an average of $52,726 in student debt, compared to $28,006 for the typical White bachelor’s graduate.”

So, TBS decided to take action in the form of their Cash Out contest, which was a social media contest. From Feb. 8 – March 8, entrants creatively shared a 60-second video via Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube on how attending an HBCU is helping them achieve their goals.

At the end of it all, four lucky winners were announced.

Anastacia C.C. Davis is a self-proclaimed “multi-hyphenate creative” and filmmaker from East Chicago, Indiana, and 2017 graduate with a bachelor’s degree in theatre arts from Alabama State University. Emani Nichols is an Atlanta-based video director and multimedia journalist at a historically Black newspaper and 2020 Morehouse College graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Africana Studies. Kevin Perry is a consultant for a global accounting firm based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a graduate from Delaware State University holding a bachelor’s degree in accounting (2018) and an MBA in data analytics (2019). And Kalen Robinson is an aspiring Broadway star and a 2020 graduate from Howard University’s BFA in musical theatre currently residing in Hyattsville, Maryland.

The winners of the TBS HBCU Cash Out program were announced on “Good Morning America” by Lance Gross (a graduate of Howard University) and Keshia Knight-Pulliam (a graduate of Spelman College).

Check out the video of them announcing the winners below.