Angie Nwandu The Shade Room.
What started as fun for Nigerian born blogger, Angie Nwandu has become a huge business bringing in tons of money and revenue for her,
TIME magazine as a result has recognised Nigerian-born American blogger among the 30 most influential people on the Internet.
The 25-year-old who is behind the celebrity gossip site, "The Shade Room’" (TSR) came 20th, ahead of Kim Kardashian, Drake, Tess Holiday, Peter Bouckart, among others.
According to the international magazine, Nwandu, within two years, transformed TSR, an Instagram account and blog, to a flourishing media empire.
"As more and more of our own daily interactions happen online, so, too, does celebrity drama. And Nwandu, 25, has made it her business to capture it.
"Two years ago, she started TSR an Instagram account and blog that aims to be like Page Six for celebrities on social media: a chronicle of who likes whose posts, who comments on whose photos, and who starts following (or better yet, unfollowing) each other.
"Since then, TSR has become a burgeoning media empire, replete with its own tipsters, staff (there are now four full-time employees), and advertisers—all of whom serve an audience of 3.9 million. And counting’" the magazine said.
Also listed among the 30 most influential personalities are, International football maestro, Cristiano Ronaldo and US presidential hopeful, Donald Trump.
Angie's story is a very inspiring one.According to Buzzfeed, Angie Nwandu’s parents emigrated from Nigeria to the United States in the late 1980s; they later gave birth to Angie in 1989. Angie’s parents were in a violent relationship. Sadly, Mr. Nwandu murdered his wife and was sentenced to 28 years to life in prison in 2002. With no immediate family left to live with, Angie and her four sisters were incorporated into the Los Angeles foster care system. Angie claimed to have been abused verbally, mentally and sexually.
At 13, she was enrolled in a program for foster children called Peace for Kids. It was here she developed her talent in poetry. According to the executive director of Peace for Kids, Zaid Gayle, Angie was the best poet the program had ever worked with.
After receiving a full scholarship, Angie graduated from Loyola Marymount University in 2012 and went on to work as an accountant for a motorcycle company which stopped paying her after a while. By March 2014, Angie was without a job and left with nothing to do, she began posting gossip on celebs with the user name The Shade Room, capturing which celeb followed who, which celeb liked what on Instagram, filling in dotted lines and giving exclusives while top gossip sites like TMZ and others were still speculating.
From the onset of The Shade Room, Angie did well to avoid using her last name as she was worried what her father would think. Understanding what being in the limelight entailed, she was uncomfortable with releasing information about her background.
Today, Angelica Nwandu had built a community of ardent followers and The Shade Room is fast growing into a media company.
According to Buzzfeed, Angie believes that she was one of the 6% of foster kids to graduate from college because she is Nigerian.
“Nigerians are some of the most successful immigrants in America,” she said. “And so when I would go to class, people would say, ‘Oh, you’re Nigerian,’ so they would expect me to be smart. Somebody expected something from me.”
Always gladdens my heart when the positive aspects of Nigerians gets portrayed like this instead of the media jumping on the few negativity.Nigerians are known for their strong emphasis on education.It paid off and was a starting point for Angie Nwandu.