The recipient of a bachelor's degree in English from Fordham University, Stephen Blackwell is a digital growth specialist who previously served as CEO of SpinMedia, which owned media assets including Vibe and Spin Magazine. In his free time, Stephen Blackwell enjoys reading up to four hours each day.While reading can be an enjoyable activity, it turns out it's also a necessary exercise to maintain good mental health and combat dementia. A 2016 study conducted by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health found that people who read books, regardless of the genre, for as little as 30 minutes a day had a life expectancy two years longer than those who didn't read at all. Magazine and newspaper reading can be helpful, but not as much as reading books. The researchers concluded that reading books requires a deeper focus that makes the brain work hard to make connections as the reader works through a long and detailed work.Beyond mental stimulation, reading every day can bring about a variety of benefits, including stress reduction, vocabulary expansion, and memory improvement. Even reading as little as 20 minutes a day on your morning commute to work can drastically improve your focus during the day to come.
The founder of lifestyle and music brand Death and Taxes, Stephen Blackwell has an entrepreneurial background that includes leading Spin Media Group, Inc. A graduate of Fordham University, Stephen Blackwell is active with his alma mater through mentoring with the campus incubator Fordham Foundry.Having created high-profile partnerships with Nasdaq and the New York City Small Business Services division, the Foundry offers a combination of collaborative workspaces and business consultations and workshops designed to motivate young entrepreneurs. Areas of support include product design, prototyping, and development, as well as the protection of intellectual property.Foundry events in 2017 included a Digital Healthcare Hackathon that brought together developers, engineers, industrial designers, and industry professionals in collaborating on deadline-driven solutions. Another high profile event was a student-run information session on the ins and outs of microfinance and its use in bootstrapping entrepreneurial ventures. The Fordham Foundry program “Getting Internships and Jobs with Startups” provided participants with actionable advice on how to position oneself to jump into the dynamic operating environment that growth companies represent.
