Elicia Banks-Gabriel

Account Supervisor, VaynerMedia

Where are you right now?

I am at West Café in Williamsburg. Eating and working with great music in the background is my favorite thing to do.

Where is your favorite place for a breakfast meeting?

West Café in Williamsburg haha I’m not working for them I promise. They are great though. You should visit them if you get a chance.

What was your first job?

My first job ever was a server at Hardees. It was the best job I’ve ever had! I wanted it so badly because my grandfather would eat breakfast with his friends every morning at the truck stop connected to the Hardees. It was great to spend time with him and show him how hard of a worker I was. He would tell me how proud he was of me and nothing has meant as much as that to me since.

How do you think we can keep talent motivated?

Whoa, so many ways! Obviously money, which sucks, and I prefer other ways around it. I’ve found that hard workers don’t realize that little things make them the happiest until they have it. For example, I do weird things like making them take a day off to explore the city and examine the people. Who isn’t into people watching? I’d send them to high schools, homeless shelters, military bases, anywhere that gets them out and experiencing life from different perspectives. It opens their minds and hearts, and ultimately they learn some lesson that they typically find invaluable.

What excites you about this next decade?

Personally, getting married one day (if I can ever find a boyfriend first!) and having children. To me, family is the most important thing in life. What is life without love? Professionally, I’m excited to see the growth of my company and industry. I’m excited to see the growth of my peers and the rise of the next generation of Dennis Crowley’s and Soraya Darabi’s. I’m excited to see New York City rival Palo Alto. I’m excited to see if Ray Kurzweil lives forever haha. I’m just excited about the whole damn thing! When I think about the future, never do I feel ill feelings, like things will fall apart and we’ll be at war with the world. In my opinion, we are in the age of collaboration and I am SO excited to see where it takes us going into the next decade!

If you had to make a quick escape where would you go?

Little slower, lower Delaware. My family is there. I have two sisters, Nicole who is 16 and Paige who is 7! And I love and miss them more than anything!

What is on your bedside table?

Well, now we’re getting personal. I’ll only be able to tell you the PG things on that table. First, the book I’m currently reading, “Living, Dreaming, Dying.” Then, a lamp I stole from my Grandmother, my contact case, my Wii remote, my cats’ snacks, and my travel books.

If you weren’t in this business what would you be doing?

I would probably be a high school English teacher in Delaware with three kids and a red neck husband. And I would most definitely be a soccer coach. It’s my backup plan haha.

Who would you most like to meet for a drink?

Well, I would have said Gary Vaynerchuk here, but now I work for him so I’m sure we’ll share a drink eventually. I’d have to say my mother and my grandmother. They haven’t been to New York City since I moved here, and I wish they would come enjoy a night out with me sometime.

What is your greatest extravagance?

Nothing really. I’m saving everything I can for my sister’s high school graduation present. I’m taking her through Europe. In 30 days, we’ll be traveling through Dublin, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris and Rome. It will be epic and hopefully inspire her to work as hard as I have so she can have amazing opportunities like I have.

“This Year’s Model” – a conversation with Jack Inslee of Heritage Radio Network. Heritage is the fast-growing, food culture radio station that streams live from Roberta’s restaurant in Bushwick. 

What’s your role at Heritage, how would you describe it? 

I can’t keep a straight face but on paper my role is president. We just became a non-profit organization so essentially I’m acting president of the non-profit. Erin Fairbanks is the executive director and Patrick Martins is the founder and chairman of the board.

So Patrick started Slow Food USA. Slow Food International was an organization and movement against fast food, promoting sustainability. And he came and founded Slow Food USA, founded Heritage Foods USA – they sell pasture raised organic meat, pork, and beef to restaurants like Roberta’s. He started the station as a way to archive and record the food revolution and it has kind of snowballed into something much bigger which is where we’re at now. So I’m the president. I oversee all the shows, all the sponsors, the tech stuff, website stuff, PR…all that.

Do you yourself host shows?

I don’t host any shows. I do some music shows now and then. Because I also throw a music party – Full Service. We’re slowly moving into more music and original stuff and I think soon there will be more regular music weekly programs. Right now we’re still juggling all this. It’s a tough transition into non-profit status. There’s a lot of things you have to do and be careful about, but once we get everything in place I want a lot of this night programming to be weekly music programming.

So you sound pretty busy, what’s an average day look like for you?

There’s lots of emails. Tons and tons of emails. Making sure every show happens – happens well. That it’s produced well, that it’s uploaded on time, uploaded the right way. Make sure the guests that come here know who we are and have a great experience. Making sure all the sponsors are happy. I’m just for the first time getting a staff under me so I’m learning how to delegate. I’ve been here three years and for a while it was just all me.

Who are some of your flagship sponsors?

Whole Foods Market, Hearst Ranch – grass-fed beef in California, Fairway market, Tekserve just donated a bunch of stuff to us…Patrick knows this hustle. He started Slow Food and that was a non profit. He’s so well connected that he’s coming from a place where it’s like “Okay, apply that model to a radio station.”

You run a record label in addition to your work with Heritage?

It’s called Fancy Restaurant records. We’re waiting until summer to put more stuff out. I’m one half of Knifeshow which is an electronic DJ-duo and we throw a party called Full Service at Tandem in Bushwick. That’s the second half of my life.

How do you juggle your work at Heritage with your party and label on the side?

Yeah…It’s tough. I’m trying to find more ways to merge the two. If all that original music can be used on radio also and there’s a home for it there. You know, then you’re killing two birds with one stone.

How do music and food programming co-exist? What’s the relationship there?

Well we’ve been using whatever music we want. But now the stakes are a bit higher. I want to use all local and original music so that you have all this Do-It-Yourself, sustainable food content with Do-It-Yourself, homemade music. It’s kind of a cool marriage I think.

How many programs do you guys work on? 

25 weekly shows that are live and then about 5 special programs that are post-produced as well.  Some of that stuff is more radio documentary-style edited and produced. Some national stations pick up our programs. They just contacted us and were like, “We’d love to play this stuff.” And we were like, “Yeah sure!” Tens of thousands of listeners for us and we keep all of our commercials and drops in there too.

What is your favorite kind of programming to produce?

Beer show, cocktail show for obvious reasons. There’s a show called Cooking Issues that’s really dope. It’s this dude Dave Arnold. He’s a food scientist he was the former director of technology at the French Culinary Institute. He takes caller questions who say, “I wanted to make the best tongue possible.” And he’s just dishing it out off the top of his head live. We get tons of callers from different countries all over the world for it.

How do you introduce new programming into the lineup? What kinds do you look for to add?

It started off as friends of friends of friends because Patrick knows all these foodies. It would be like, “Listen. Mitchell Davis wants a show – we’re giving him a show. He’s the Vice President of the James Beard foundation, let’s make it work.” It’s been like that, but now we’re taking applications. We have a non-profit team so we can sit and review it.

I’m at the point now where social media plays a big part in whether I want a show from you. I’m looking to see how are you going to promote the show. Because it’s the internet and that’s important. We just launched a show with this women from DesignSponge.com - a huge design blog. She’s got half a million Twitter followers. That makes it way easier.

Are there any partnerships you would turn down?

It would be pretty tough for us to cosign with McDonald’s or CocaCola.

Where do you see Heritage 5 years down the road?

We want 10% of the NPR market. Maybe we won’t be all over terrestrial radio, but everyone who podcasts NPR we want 10% of that market. And I think we’re on our way. And every one of our shows is podcast-able, downloadable. People listen to this shit at their own convenience. You have a 30 minute commute to work that’s perfect. We were built on our archive. That’s what sets us apart from different radio stations.

The best dish at Roberta’s?

Uhh… I mean a pizza is the go-to thing. If it’s a pizza it’s the Cheesus Christ. Which is banging. It has four different cheeses and a bunch of black pepper. The carpaccio is really good for an appetizer. I didn’t know anything about food coming into this. I was eating KFC. I ate fast food and drank soda everyday. Listening to these shows for three years is like grad school.

What sites or blogs do you frequent most?

I like XLR8R to keep me up on what’s going on in the dance music world, I have to admit I go to Pitchfork. In terms of knowing what good shit came out…it works. Definitely basketball fanboy sites – like RealGM.com. I’m a die-hard Knicks fan. I guess FADER to round it out.

Best parties in NYC other than Full service?

I haven’t been going to parties as much. But I always like what the Turbo Tax guys do. We’re going to be playing BPM151 this summer with Knifeshow – every other week. And the Bunker is good. I didn’t used to be into minimal but I went to one show at Bunker and was sold.