Black Americans face significant challenges in tracing their lineage due to historical erasure and lack of records during slavery. To address this, Ancestry digitized Freedmen's Bureau records to support family discoveries. Among these records, genealogists found letters from Hawkins Wilson, a freedman seeking his family, which inspired a mission to reunite his descendants in a short docu-film released for Juneteenth.

I led the campaign, ensuring it resonated with both the Black community and general market. We featured genealogist Nicka Sewell-Smith, historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., and actor Anthony Anderson, with Yara Shahidi and her mother Keri as influencers. The month-long rollout began in May with broad media coverage, concluding with impactful content from our influencers on Juneteenth.

The film, “A Dream Delivered: The Lost Letters of Hawkins Wilson,” garnered 2.7 million views and 1.8 billion media impressions, with features in major outlets like USA Today and Good Morning America with Anthony further promoting the film on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Social media partnerships yielded over 25 million impressions. The campaign has won seven industry awards to date including a Global Sabre and Shorty Impact.