Behind some of the most celebrated events in Black entertainment — including the ESSENCE Festival of Culture and the ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood luncheon — are two sisters whose journey to success began not in a Hollywood boardroom, but in the chaos of a political coup that shattered their family and forced them to start over from nothing.
From Liberia’s 1980 Coup to Hollywood Power Players: The Story of MVD Inc.
Massah David and Miatta David Johnson are the co-founders of MVD Inc., a creative agency that has become one of the most influential production companies operating at the intersection of entertainment, culture, and activism. Their client list reads like a who’s who of the industry — Mary J. Blige, Nas, Common, Netflix, Universal Pictures, and LVMH among them. But the foundation of everything they have built traces back to a defining and devastating moment in their childhood.
In 1980, a military coup in Liberia upended their family’s world entirely. Their uncle was President Tolbert, who was assassinated during the coup. Their father, who had served as the youngest mayor of Monrovia, was imprisoned for over 18 months. The family’s position, their safety, and their future were all placed in immediate jeopardy.
“The coup basically devastated our family,” Miatta told People. “Our father was the mayor of Monrovia, and our uncle was the president, President Tolbert. There was a coup and he was assassinated. They took basically all of the politicians and anybody that was attached to the government; they were trying to eliminate. Our father was jailed for over 18 months, which was an extremely traumatic time.”
Rebuilding Life in America: The Grit That Built an Empire
The family’s journey to the United States came in stages. Miatta arrived first, at age seven, with their father and two older brothers. Massah followed two years later, at age four, with their mother. What awaited them in America was not ease or privilege — it was the hard, unglamorous work of starting over from scratch.
Their father, once the youngest mayor of Monrovia, became a shoe salesman. That image — of a man who held significant public office choosing to do whatever it took to provide for his family — became the moral compass the sisters would carry throughout their careers.
“He went from being the mayor to selling shoes. He was a salesman, but we saw the grit and understood that he always said that hard work is going to get you to where you need to go, and it’s always family first,” Miatta explained. “It speaks to just the resilience of, I think, just the human spirit and how people don’t really appreciate or understand what refugees go through. We saw it firsthand.”
That firsthand experience of displacement and reinvention gave both sisters something that no formal education could fully replicate — a deep understanding of what it means to build from nothing, and the confidence that it can be done.
How Massah and Miatta Built MVD Inc. Into a Premier Creative Agency
MVD Inc. was co-founded in 2002, combining Miatta’s strategic background with Massah’s creative instincts. Miatta brought a sharp analytical foundation — she had worked as a financial reporter for Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal after graduating from NYU. Massah, a Howard University alumna, left TVT Records to join her sister and bring the creative side of the operation to life.
Together, they built a company whose reach now extends across entertainment, film, fashion, and philanthropy. Their production work has touched some of the most prestigious events and partnerships in the industry, and their ability to connect high-profile artists and brands with meaningful causes has made them a uniquely valuable presence in their space.
Their perfectionism — which they openly acknowledge as both their biggest strength and their most significant challenge — has driven them to continuously raise the bar. As Massah told People, they “constantly want to outdo ourselves” and “elevate it.” That relentless standard is visible in every event they produce and every partnership they cultivate.
Using Their Platform for Social Impact: From Schools Not Prisons to Teach For America
With their network and influence firmly established, Massah and Miatta have consistently turned their access into advocacy. One of their most notable philanthropic collaborations came in 2016, when they partnered with Schools Not Prisons — an initiative focused on ending mass incarceration and redirecting public investment away from prisons and toward education.
“With our Rolodex, we felt there’s no better way to utilize that than through something like this. People really didn’t understand that, unfortunately, a lot of the schools-to-prisons pipeline happens within the Black and Brown communities,” Miatta explained. “As we delved deeper and really understood how important it was for our community and saw that we could really lend our voices and utilize our relationships within the music space, we thought it was a perfect marriage.”
They partnered with activist and rapper Pusha T to amplify the initiative. In 2020, even as the COVID-19 pandemic forced a pivot to virtual events, they collaborated with Teach For America to honor outstanding educators — bringing in Angela Bassett as a surprise guest for teachers who had been told her participation was impossible. The response, by all accounts, was one of complete and joyful disbelief.
Dope Africans and the Mission to Celebrate African Culture in Entertainment
Drawing on their own African heritage and a growing awareness of the invisible walls between African creatives working in the entertainment industry, Massah and Miatta founded Dope Africans in 2019. The organization curates events specifically designed to bring together Africans working across entertainment, celebrate their shared culture, and build a genuine community that had previously existed without formal connection.
“Coming up in the industry, there were not a lot of Africans. Now we are literally everywhere, which is amazing, but we started to notice that we didn’t know each other,” Massah explained. “So, we had this idea to create a moment where we could really celebrate our culture, have all of our friends come together, creatives come together that were in the industry and connect and build community.”
Dope Africans has hosted events during Grammy weekend, Paris Fashion Week, and other high-profile occasions — creating cultural moments in spaces where African identity has often been invisible. It is a natural extension of everything the sisters have built — using access not just for commercial success, but to fill gaps that the industry has too long ignored.
The ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon and What Drives It All
For the fifth consecutive year, Massah and Miatta are organizing the ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood luncheon — the annual pre-Oscars event that honors Black women’s contributions to film. This year’s honorees include Chase Infiniti, Kerry Washington, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Zinzi Coogler, and the women of Sinners. The event has grown into one of the most anticipated gatherings in Hollywood’s awards season calendar.
At its core, however, the purpose of the luncheon is not glamour — it is community. The sisters have built it as a safe, supportive space where Black women across all roles in the industry — producers, agents, and actresses alike — can connect, find solidarity, and be celebrated in a room designed specifically for them.
That mission — of creating space, building community, and using access for good — runs through everything Massah and Miatta have done since 2002. From a family that lost almost everything in a political coup to the architects of some of Black entertainment’s most important events, their story is one of the most remarkable in the industry. And they are clearly just getting started.