NV Magazine has established its 15-year history as a "new vision" of business publication for urban professionals around the country. Whether scaling the ladder within corporate America or creating a successful venture from scratch, NV has chosen to not only acknowledge, but honor, many of these ground-breakers with its annual Movers & Shakers Awards.

For the past five years, Founder, Kyle Donovan and Publisher, Christopher Chaney and their team have solicited recommendations for and researched their selections to identify honorees from the well-established, even famous, to the less celebrated but ascending innovators, executives and business "hustlers" within the multicultural community. This isn't for the sake of taking nice pictures and having a cocktail, NV's mission is to empower communities of color through the recognition of these trendsetters and inspire collective collaboration to generate wealth and long term economic stability for the black and Latino market.

One of the superstar awardees of the event was Ericka Pittman, Vice President Brand Strategy of Sean Combs' Blue Flame Agency. As the brand and marketing arm of the wildly popular CIROC Ultra-Premium Vodka, we asked how she felt about the recognition.

Check out the video interview with Ericka Pittman

"When they called and told me I was nominated and I would be on the cover amongst such amazing, esteemed colleagues and peer group, I thought it was amazing, said Ericka Pittman. " I've followed the NV Movers & Shakers covers for years and so for me, it was an honor to be nominated and included in the process."

Being responsible for such an explosion of business, what's been the most exciting and challenging part for Ericka the past two years?

"With a meteoric success like CIROC, I mean five years, two million cases, we're super excited," Ericka replied. "We're the #2 Ultra-Premium vodka in the country and you know obviously it's one thing to come up but it's another thing to stay up, right? Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, so we have a lot of imitation happening in the market place, a lot of our strategy is being mimicked and it's interesting to try and stay fresh and new and stay exciting and connected to our consumers, at the same time stay authentic, so we're constantly challenged and brainstorming trying figure out what's new, what's hot and what's next!"

And when asked what's coming up?

To which Ericka replied, "So Blue Flame is Sean Combs right? So it's everything Sean Combs and obviously he has always got his hands in the mix of amazing, fantastic stuff. He's executive producing Rick Ross' new album, he's going to be working on a new project and there's REVOLT, the new television network, so we have a lot of amazing, awesome stuff happening at Blue Flame and Combs Enterprises and stay tuned for some really exciting stuff from CIROC.