Yla Eason

Yla Eason is Assistant Professor of Professional Practice at Rutgers University where she teaches business communications and marketing. She has directed learning and development for the R/GA digital advertising agency and the Center for Excellence in Advertising at Howard University and lectured at the business school at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York (CUNY).

In 1985 she founded the multicultural toy company Olmec Toys and has earned numerous awards, including the U. S. Business Enterprise Trust Award in 1996 and the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce’s Alice H. Parker Women Leaders in Innovation Award in 2020. In this interview, Eason describes how she founded and ran her trailblazing company. Key words: diversity and toys; marketing toys; Olmec Toys; toy design; toy industry, Sun-Man