Yla Eason is an award-winning educator and entrepreneur who is largely credited with pioneering the ethnic toy market at mass market stores. As an Assistant Professor of Professional Practice at Rutgers University, her focus is Business Communications, Multicultural Marketing, and Digital Marketing.
She received an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Fitchburg State University. She has earned numerous awards and honors for founding and growing to $5 million Olmec Toys, a multicultural toy company, including an honorary Ph.D. from Bloomfield College; 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), She also taught e-Commerce for CUNYs School of Professional Studies.
In 2020 she received the ‘Women Leaders in Innovation Award’ from the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, the ‘Education Award’ from the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey and was featured in MSNBC’s Into America podcast with Trymaine Lee. In 2021 she entered into a licensing agreement with Mattel to reproduce her line of Sun-Man action figures. Eason, a Tulsa, Oklahoma native, resides in Newark, New Jersey.