As Managing Partner of The Purple Agency, Andre Watson guides and oversees a distinguished team of public relations and marketing executives renowned for culture-defining media moments. He implements and upholds a streamlined framework for success rooted in his own dynamic entrepreneurial experience at Fortune 500 companies, spanning pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to houseware staple Rubbermaid. In essence, he remains the linchpin of the firm’s sustained success and continued expansion as a lifestyle leader.
While living in Los Angeles and working in pharmaceutical sales, he simultaneously developed a foothold in the entertainment community with his own AGW Consulting Firm. In 2009, he enrolled in the prestigious Stern Business School at New York University where he achieved his MBA in Corporate Finance and Global Business following semesters abroad in Milan, Australia, and Tanzania. In 2013, working alongside Frank Gatson, Jr., he shepherded budgets, touring, and operations for Luke James, while the burgeoning star opened up for Beyoncé on the Mrs. Carter World Tour.
2016 saw him shift gears as he left the world of corporate sales and transitioned to entertainment full-time as Director of Strategic Partnerships for The Purple Agency. In 2019, he took the helm and assumed the role of Managing Partner, alongside founder and CEO Phylicia Fant. In addition to personally representing clients such as GRAMMY® Award-winning multiplatinum stars Usher, Jermaine Dupri and Anthony Hamilton, GRAMMY®-nominated musical director and artist Adam Blackstone, as well as Stranger Things and BMF actor Myles Truitt, Candiace Dillard-Bassett, Culture Creators, The Blackhouse Foundation, and Sheryl Lee Ralph’s DIVAS Simply Singing!, he manages a team of ten and spearheads expansion in the worlds of tech, film, television, and beyond.
Andre hails from Chicago and is an alum of Northwestern University, where he pledged the Theta Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. He also serves on the 2024 Culture Creators Advisory Council, the Anthony Burrell Center for Dance Advisory Board, and is a 2022 class member of The Recording Academy.