Zennie Abraham

Zennie Abraham, Jr. – Chicago-born, then Chicago and Oakland-raised Zennie Abraham, Jr.- has emerged as one of the premier media entrepreneurs in Oakland, and a nationally-known news video blogger. Zennie Abraham, Jr., and by extension his Zennie62Media, Inc. company, has established a platform of 100 blogs and hundreds of social media outlets that is among the largest in the San Francisco Bay Area, if not the largest.

Zennie created Oakland Focus, the first, ever, blog about Oakland, California in 2004. Mr. Abraham was on the iReport platform before CNN bought it in 2006.

Zennie was asked by YouTube to join its CNN / YouTube Democratic Debate Program in 2007. There, his famous “Coin Question” was asked of then Senator, now President, Joe Biden:

In 2008, he was selected to be one of the first 128 bloggers ever invited to cover a Democratic National Convention. In 2008, YouTube invited him to become one of the first YouTube Partners, a designation he still has, today.

Zennie has used every video platform made from Blip.tv to Seesmic to 12 Seconds TV to Vidoco (where he was on its board of directors). Zennie62Media, Inc. now owns and runs over 100 blogs he created and used for content creation and reputation management. He has pioneered the creation of a video-to-blog news system that Delaware C-Corporation Zennie62Media, Inc. now owns. With it, he has covered the NFL (just finished the NFL Spring League Meeting in Atlanta), the NFL Draft since 2005, San Diego Comic Con and CES Las Vegas since 2010, and TechCrunch pioneer event called TechCrunch Disrupt, starting in 2010.

Zennie Abraham has a long history of work in and service to his beloved Oakland, California. While at Skyline High School (Class of 1980), Zennie entered a design contest for the then-proposed reformation of what is now Frank Qgawa Plaza. The zig-zag step pattern that’s part of the lawn today came directly from his plans – even though at the time, he finished as runner-up (something that haunts him to this day). Zennie thanks Frank Qgawa Plaza architect Yui Hay Lee for not forgetting his idea.

After earning his BA in urban planning and economics at Texas-Arlington, Zennie returned to Oakland, and became a student at the number-one-ranked Master of City Planning Program at the University of California at Berkeley. Zennie’s focus at Berkeley? Oakland economic development.

That formed the foundation for his internship with the Oakland Redevelopment Agency, his establishment of an economic consulting company, Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson’s placement of Zennie on the Alameda Base Reuse Committee, Chris Treadway hiring him as a columnist for The Montclarion, then-Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris hiring him as his economic advisor (and asking him to work with everyone from the Oakland Raiders to real estate developers), and Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and City Adminstrator Robert Bobb tapping him to run the effort to bring the 2005 Super Bowl to Oakland.

He was also CNN’s featured iReporter at the historic 2008 Democratic National Convention, where Barack Obama became America’s first black president.