Media and entertainment industry veteran executive Debra Langford will deliver the commencement address to more than 700 North Carolina A&T State University graduates in the Greensboro Coliseum at 8:30 a.m., Dec. 8.

Langford is the chief executive officer of The Langford Company, a business that provides brand activation to the multicultural audience, diversity and inclusion strategies and the development of top tier diverse candidate pipelines through exclusive events. 

Before becoming CEO, Langford was the vice president of inclusion and business diversity, NBCUniversal for two years. She was responsible for creating, setting and advancing the inclusion and business diversity strategy across the company.

Prior to joining NBCUniversal, Langford was a vice president of strategic sourcing for Time Warner, where she specialized in identifying top-tier, diverse executives for senior positions across all divisions of Time.

Prior to her corporate roles with NBCU and TW, Langford was a senior content creative executive, including the senior vice president of production and development for UrbanEntertainment.com, vice president and general manager of Essence Entertainment, vice president of television for Quincy Jones/David Salzman Entertainment, vice president of warner bros. television.  Her career in the entertainment industry began as director of development with Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1986.

Last year, President Barack Obama named Langford to the USO Board of Governors. She is also a member of the advisory boards for the American Black Film Festival (ABFF) and the Association of African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA). In addition to those boards, Langford is one of the founding members and a leader of Colour TV and Colour Film, the organizations of top diverse creative executives in television, film and digital.