Shake-Up At The Global Grind. CEO Navarrow Wright Shoved Aside By Russell Simmons.

Editor’s note: The following guest post is written by Angela Benton, founder and Publisher of Black Web 2.0, where it originally appeared.


While working on a follow-up story to the Global Grind celebrity mass that they currently perpetrate as content I came across something much more interesting.  The CEO of the company Navarrow Wright is no longer listed on the company About Us page suggesting that Wright and the company have parted ways. A cached version of the page from March 17th at 6:28pm still lists him as CEO so the split was more than likely the result of internal disagreement and definitely abrupt.

This is no surprise especially if you take a look at the direction of the product since Russell Simmons has become more involved in his new role as Editor-in-Chief, which said simply means Simmons leveraging his celeb contacts for content.  In most cases to the detriment of the product.  My bet is the 2, Wright and Simmons, couldn’t see eye to eye on the direction of the product and what it actually is.  I’m calling this more than a hunch since it was clear there was tension between the 2 when they were featured in a video while at NPR studios for an interview in November of last year:

Russell Simmons at NPR

Russell’s need to constantly over talk the CEO and wrongly correct what the product is a number of times is more than enough to prove the working relationship of the 2 wasn’t the best.  The bigger question though is now that Wright seems to be out what will Global Grind become? Is it on its way to the deadpool, and will ACCEL lose their $4.5 million investment with media mogul Russell Simmons running this web start-up? Or does Simmons have it in him to rise to the occasion and save the faltering property?

Update: Wright’s LinkedIn profile has been updated to show that his CEO and president postions are no longer current.