Variety to Honor Gabrielle Union at Entertainment & Tech Summit

Leaders and entrepreneurs at the intersection of tech and entertainment will come together on Sept. 25 for Variety‘s Entertainment & Technology Summit at the London West Hollywood. This year’s Summit will include panels, discussions and networking opportunities for emerging and established innovators across a wide breadth of industries.

Keynote speakers at the summit include film producer Jerry Bruckheimer, whose latest blockbuster, “F1,” stars Brad Pitt; “Stranger Things” creators Matt and Ross Duffer; and a roundtable on the future of streaming featuring television executives from Warner Bros., Sony, NBCUniversal, Starz and Amazon Studios.

Discussions with additional guests will focus on topics such as artificial intelligence, the live-experience economy, creator marketing, sports culture in streaming and storytelling entrepreneurism. The day will also feature a fireside chat with Disney Television Group president Craig Erwich and “Abbott Elementary” creator Quinta Brunson, as well as a conversation on entertainment technology driving mental health awareness with Universal Music CEO Jody Gerson and Project Healthy Minds founder Phil Schermer.

Gabrielle Union will receive this year’s Variety Entrepreneur Impact Award, presented by Wells Fargo, at the summit. Union is an actor, producer, author and entrepreneur known for her roles in “Bring It On,” “She’s All That” and “10 Things I Hate About You.” She recently produced the Amazon film “The Idea of You” and the BET+ docuseries “My Journey to 50.” Her production company, I’ll Have Another, was founded in 2018 to champion diverse and marginalized stories on screen. With her husband, former NBA star Dwyane Wade, she founded Proudly, a baby-care brand specializing in products for infants of color. She also founded the children’s healthy snack company Bitsy’s and the haircare product line Flawless.

Union describes her brand as “meeting the needs of the most vulnerable,” driven by a mission “to deliver great, beautiful, effective products that people actually need on a day-to-day basis.” Regarding how she uses entertainment and technology in her work, she says, “I just believe that we have the ability to connect and to care for the most vulnerable and and to use technology for the betterment of humanity.” Whether she’s delivering a performance, producing a film or creating a product, Union wants to “use tech for all of its amazing capabilities, to heal the world, to connect us versus tearing us apart, to share resources, to share information, to share different ways of being sustainable and to shrink the world versus creating a bigger gulf between the haves and the have nots.”