First Strides

‘First Strides’ celebrates, inspires and enables people and organisations taking bold strides to move culture forward for all, investing in cultural trailblazers through grants, visibility, mentorship and empowerment programming. The initiative has seen Johnnie Walker champion women filmmakers at the Oscars, partner with IFundWomen to promote its career equality ambitions and team up with LA-based Angel City F.C. to advocate for more opportunities in women’s sport.

Johnnie Walker partnered with three local ‘Walkers’, each of them a cultural icon in their own right: Yung Raja, a Singaporean breakthrough dubbed Southeast Asia’s next avant-garde bilingual hip-hop artist; James Reid, an actor turned musician, artist, manager and entrepreneur innovating and changing the game of Original Pilipino Music (OPM); and 16Typh, a Vietnamese rapper and songwriter who has put Vietnamese rap on the global map.