Issa Rae’s Hoorae Names Malick Diop as Chief Financial Officer

Issa Rae’s Hoorae Media has named veteran financial executive Malick Diop as chief financial officer.

As CFO, Diop will be responsible for setting the financial and risk management operations for all of Rae’s business entities, including Hoorae Media and its divisions — Hoorae TV and Film; the “audio everywhere company,” Raedio; and ColorCreative, its management division, along with her real estate portfolio under RaeBuilds. In his new role, Diop will also help develop and execute Hoorae’s financial and operational strategy, create and track KPIs and oversee the ongoing development and monitoring of the company’s financials.

With an MBA in finance from the Wharton School and an undergraduate degree from Morehouse College, Diop has an extensive background in M&A transactions, strategy development, debt and equity capital raising, risk evaluation and mitigation, and financial modeling and forecasting.

According to a release announcing Diop’s appointment, the executive has built his career “helping multibillion-dollar corporations achieve their financial goals, guided by three core principles: sound judgement, unwavering integrity and prudent fiscal stewardship.” He is said to apply a “rigorous approach” to financial modeling and strategy development that “engenders trust and rapport” with C-level leaders, investors and corporate boards.

Prior to joining Hoorae, Diop was a managing director in Morgan Stanley’s financial institutions investment banking practice. There, he oversaw the group’s mortgage and residential mortgage real estate investment trust (REIT) sectors and played key leadership roles in Rocket Mortgage’s $2 billion IPO and the $16 billion merger between United Wholesale Mortgage and Gores Holdings IV. He also served as the primary advisor to the majority shareholder of a $5 billion global consumer retail business.

Diop began his career in 2000, following his graduation from Morehouse, as an investment banking analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities, where he experienced both the crest and the crash of the dot-com bubble. He next took on a senior credit analyst role with American International Group (AIG), where he worked with global construction and engineering firms on financial modeling and risk exposure for high-stakes projects and capital investments. He joined Morgan Stanley’s financial institutions group in 2009 after earning his MBA from Wharton.