Logo
Print this page

Ruth J.Morrison

Ruth J. Morrison with Major League Baseball's World Series trophy Ruth J. Morrison with Major League Baseball's World Series trophy

Not one to color inside the lines, Ruth J. Morrison is the CEO and Founder of What’s The 411 Networks, a celebrity-driven integrated media, marketing, and lifestyle events company. She provides marketing and public relations advice to corporations, nonprofits, small businesses, authors, and political candidates. Her company is credentialed to cover the Brooklyn Nets, the New York Knicks, NY Giants, boxing, NBA, and NFL events. She is the author of an upcoming book focused on being an entrepreneur in the sports and entertainment industry. A video streaming pioneer, she developed and launched from conception the City of New York's multi-channel cable television network (NYC TV), which included licensing content for the network. Ms. Morrison is a former Communications Director and Legislative Advisor to a New York Member of the U.S. Congress. As the creator and executive producer of What’s The 411, an award-winning entertainment news and information television show, she became the first African-American independent television producer to distribute a weekly television show on a broadcast channel, WNYC-TV. She also licensed What’s The 411 to a broadcaster in South Africa. With the creation of What’s The 411Sports, she is now one of the very few women in the country to own a sports news media company. She was a public relations consultant for the largest football game held at Giants Stadium; the first African-American woman journalist to cover the New York Knicks as a beat reporter; and, for three years, she worked in Brasil as an entertainment and television licensing consultant for an American company.

Ms. Morrison was also the first Executive Director of the Brooklyn International Trade Development Center (BITDC), New York City’s first and only small business development center whose sole mission was to assist small businesses with selling their products and services to foreign markets. In this capacity, she partnered with the US Commercial Service and the International Trade Administration’s Western Hemisphere Unit. She signed Memorandums of Understanding with the Export-Import Bank of the United States and the U.S. Minority Business Development Agency. She developed a partnership with the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and helped to launch the Allied African Nations Chamber of Commerce. She was an active member of committees implementing the U.S. – Brasil Joint Action Plan, which is under the auspices of the U.S. State Department and the government of Brasil.

Under Ms. Morrison’s leadership, BITDC promoted and recruited companies to participate in business opportunity missions to many countries around the world, most notably Dubai, Abu Dhabi, the Canary Islands, the UK, Brasil, and Haiti following the earthquake. She also created an Emerging Market Seminar Series.

Ms. Morrison earned a master's degree in Interactive Telecommunications from the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, completed her coursework towards a Ph.D. in political science at Columbia University and she was a Communications Fellow at the Annenberg Washington Program of Northwestern University. Ms. Morrison is a member of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, the MIT Enterprise Forum of NYC, and the New York Association of Black Journalists. She has served on many non-profit boards and she has received numerous honors including awards from the European Federation of Black Women Business Owners at an event in London, and Nation to Nation Networking for her work in building bridges among cultures. Ms. Morrison is available to speak at events.

What's The 411 Networks 1994 - 2017. All Rights Reserved.