Mark D. Walton
Executive Vice President, Sponsorship & Corporate Development
The Africa Channel

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Mr. Walton has over 20 years of experience in advertising sales, TV and film distribution, marketing, and general management.

Before joining The Africa Channel, Mr. Walton was president and CEO of Onyx Media Group International, Inc., a New York-based advertising sales and TV program distribution company, which he co-founded. For 15 years, Onyx secured sponsorship and distribution, domestic and international, for over 50 television programs, aimed at both general audiences and multicultural viewers. Over the years Onyx’s client roster included: Post-Newsweek Stations Group, Cowles Enthusiast Media, Black Entertainment Television, CBS New Media, SI Communications, and the Hispanic Heritage Awards Foundation. In 2003, his company syndicated the off-network, dramatic series New York Undercover.

Mr. Walton was vice president of marketing and a founding partner in the film distribution company KJM3 Entertainment Group. In 1992, they developed the successful distribution and promotional strategy for Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust. They were also the U.S. distributors for a number of other independent films from Africa and the Caribbean, notably, The Man By The Shore, Rude, More Time, and
Neria.

Prior to this, Mr. Walton spent over ten years with the CBS Television Network in New York holding various management positions in sales, marketing, and finance. He was the first management trainee at the network and his first assignment was as a market analyst, providing support to new business efforts. By the time he left CBS, Mr. Walton was responsible for marketing network television news, daytime, late night, and children’s programs to a roster of major advertisers and their ad agencies with billings in excess of $75 million.

Mr. Walton was also an AAAA (MAIP) intern in account management at the ad agency of D’Arcy, MacManus & Masius and a staff writer for Encore magazine.

He is currently an adjunct instructor in media management at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business, a member of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, and board vice chairman at the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center.

Mr. Walton holds a BS in journalism from Boston University and received an MBA from the Yale School of Management.

He has been traveling to Africa for leisure and business for the past twenty years.