Angela Yee is Looking Forward to Life After The Breakfast Club

After holding it down for 13 years on the radio as the only female member of The Breakfast Club, Angela Yee is saying goodbye to The World’s Most Dangerous Morning Show on December 2. But lucky for us, she’s not going very far. Yee is set to host her own nationally syndicated radio show, “Way Up with Angela Yee,” beginning in January.

And if that wasn’t enough, she’s also partnering with beauty giant SheaMoisture to announce the launch of the company’s Community Impact Grant, which will award two Black small business owners making a positive impact in their community a $10,000 grant towards their business. Interested businesses can nominate themselves on the SheaMoisture website until November 27 at 11:59 p.m. EST.

The grant announcement comes along with the release of the company’s Impact Report highlighting their ongoing commitment to the Black community, including direct financial investment for entrepreneurs to scale their businesses, entrepreneurial development and mentoring programs and emergency financial support for Black-owned businesses in times of crisis.

 The Root caught up with Yee to talk about her partnership with SheaMoisture and how she’s looking ahead to life after The Breakfast Club.

Yee said it was easy to align herself with a brand doing work she believes in. “I’ve always been a fan of SheaMoisture. But knowing that a brand you love is also doing great things for our community is just an added cherry on top,” she said.

She hopes that the support from SheaMoisture will help Black and brown entrepreneurs avoid some of the mistakes she made when she opened her first business, Brooklyn juice bar Juices for Life. “When I opened my juice bar, I didn’t know anything about running a business. I didn’t know about an operating agreement or getting insurance,” she said. “But we can prevent that from happening to other people and help them successfully open their businesses, expand and grow.”

As she gets ready to start the new year with a new radio show, Yee is excited. But she says she does feel some pressure to produce something her fans will love. “I keep telling myself, ‘This has got to work!’” she says. “Thirteen years is an incredible run for a morning show with no cast member changes. It’s historic,” she said. “We made it into the Radio Hall of Fame. I’m just glad it happened before I left.”

But the gossip girl who kept us in the know with her Rumor Report is keeping the details of her new show close to the vest. She says listeners will have to tune in to find out what she has planned.

“I have like 30 segments mapped out that I want to do already, so I have to narrow it down. But I promise you, it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be informative, entertaining and uplifting, and I’m just hyped about it,” she said.

“As a Black woman, the opportunity to employ other people, elevate our stories and curate the conversations I want is really important to me. That’s why I’m really intentional about aligning with SheaMoisture. Giving money to small Black and brown-owned businesses perfectly aligns with everything I’m doing.”