Colette Phillips speaks at MGC’s Juneteenth staff event
- June 26, 2025
- by Connor Donahue
- 0 comments
In recognition of Juneteenth, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC) welcomed Colette Phillips as a keynote speaker during a staff event this week, reinforcing the agency’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in both its operations and the communities it serves. The event was organized by Commissioner Nakisha Skinner, who invited Phillips to speak.
Phillips, president and CEO of Colette Phillips Communications and founder of Boston’s nationally recognized Get Konnected! networking series, brought her decades of experience as what Boston Magazine calls “Boston’s greatest connector” to the MGC staff. The Antigua native, consistently named among the publication’s 150 Most Influential Bostonians, has built her career by becoming “a key liaison between the Boston business community and local minority enterprises.”
Drawing from her personal journey from the Caribbean Island of Antigua to Emerson University and eventually to the forefront of Boston’s business community, Phillips emphasized how the connections she fostered as a young immigrant shaped not just her career, but her understanding of what true inclusion looks like in practice. Nowadays, Phillips is an integral part of the city’s professional network, with Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu and former Mayors Kim Janey and Marty Walsh citing Phillips as an invaluable advisor and mentor.
“Colette delivered a powerful message of celebration and embrace of our differences, but also reminded us that the similarities that connect us as human beings are greater than those differences and should lead us to a more empathic response to diversity, equity, and inclusion, not resentment,” Commissioner Skinner said.
Phillips’ message resonated particularly strongly given the MGC’s role in regulating an industry that touches diverse communities across the Commonwealth.
While the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect in 1863, not everyone in Confederate territory would immediately be free. On June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and announced that the over 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state were free by executive decree. Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, commemorates this history each June 19, and marks the country’s second independence day.*