Akilah Saidah Kamaria Hughes

Akilah Hughes (born Akilah Saidah Kamaria Hughes on August 31, 1989) is an American writer, comedian, YouTuber, podcaster and actress. She has been a digital correspondent for MTV, HBO, Fusion TV and Comedy Central. She began her career on a YouTube channel, "It's Akilah, Obviously!", which has gained more than 150,000 subscribers. Hughes was born in Florence, Kentucky, attended Boone County High School, and graduated from Berea College with a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcasting in 2010. In 2012 she moved to New York City and earned an Upright Citizens Brigade scholarship.

On December 2, 2013, Hughes uploaded the comedy video "Meet Your First Black Girlfriend," which went viral, and she was again recognized for "On Intersectionality in Feminism and Pizza" in 2015. In 2016 she created a Change.org petition titled "Ask Advertisers to Stop Supporting BuzzFeed Video's Idea Theft," which The Washington Post described as having gone viral. In April 2020, Comedy Central's YouTube channel released three sketches starring Hughes and Milana Vayntrub as part of a digital sketch series called Making Fun With Akilah and Milana.

Hughes appeared as a correspondent when HBO aired four episodes of Crooked Media's Pod Save America during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, and in 2020 she provided the voice of Theresa in an episode of Bob's Burgers. Her book, a collection of essays titled Obviously: Stories From My Timeline, was published in 2019 by Penguin Random House's Razorbill imprint. From October 2019 to July 2021 she co-hosted the Crooked Media daily news podcast What a Day alongside journalist Gideon Resnick; the podcast won a Webby Award as the People's Voice Winner of "Best News & Politics Podcast" in 2021.