Introducing Cero Magazine

As you explore this new website, you might be wondering why the world needs another magazine. When we first started discussing the idea back in January 2020, we asked ourselves the same question. Why us? Why now? Why here? Why a magazine? Now in the spring of 2021, after all that has happened in the past year, those questions feel even more urgent, but the answers have also become that much clearer.

With Cero Magazine—the name riffs on the idea of zero, both a beginning and an end, both infinite and full of potential—we have tried to rethink every aspect of a publication to create one that speaks to the pressing needs of today. First and foremost, we are a nonprofit organization, with the goal of celebrating, spotlighting, inspiring, and supporting the next generation of young innovators and creatives. To that end, we will be rolling out a series of educational initiatives including mentorships, lecture series, master classes, and workshops in the years to come.

New York has been my home for many years, and over the course of a decade working on arts and culture magazines, I have found myself continuously refreshed by the constant spirit of exploration, experimentation, and discovery that flourishes here, even while I recognize that the city has become an increasingly difficult and expensive place in which to create. With the historic unemployment rates that came in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, it is more obvious than ever how necessary it is to support those who are striving to push the conversation forward through their work, whether they be poets, actors, dancers, directors, chefs, painters, designers, inventors, musicians, writers, or anything else.

The Cero team’s original plan was to launch last September, a goal that we quickly realized would be impossible as country after country locked down. Inspired by the conversations that began taking place around the world after the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others, we took the extra time to thoroughly question our values, aims, and intentions with this publication. We decided to dedicate Cero Magazine to curiosity, inclusivity, sustainability, and accountability, four ideals to which we plan to hold ourselves in everything we do.

When we began thinking about what we actually wanted the first issue to be about, we were inspired by the generation of young activists now coming to the forefronts of fights against systemic injustice the world over. In our inaugural issue, we have assembled over two dozen young individuals from six continents who are all making a mark in their own way on some of the most pressing issues we face today, from women’s rights in Poland to educational reform in Thailand, from LGBTQ+ equality in Brazil to malnutrition in Kenya. Our five cover subjects are best known for tackling racism, the climate crisis, authoritarianism, and violence against Black transgender people, but the reality is that all of their efforts intersect in the larger global fight for equity and justice.

With our first issue, we are proud to have the opportunity to commit ourselves to uplifting and supporting others and doing what we can to be a part of the solution instead of the problem. We aim to hold ourselves to a higher standard, one that we recognize we will not always achieve, and we plan to take our shortcomings as opportunities to educate ourselves on what we can improve. The work to effect change— both within ourselves and in the world at large—is constant, but it is work that we know needs to be done.