Diego Boneta

Singer, actor

After releasing two albums in Mexico in the early 2000s, Boneta broke out in America following his appearance in the 2012 musical drama “Rock of Ages,” ihis first feature film. He followed it up with a main part in Ryan Murphy’s “Scream Queens” before landing a starring role as Luis Miguel in the Telemundo biographical series of the world-famous Latin musician. The portrayal combines Boneta’s love for acting and singing, and he performed on most of the series’ soundtrack. Next, he will star in and produce the adaptation of the Latin comic book series “El Gato Negro, Nocturnal Warrior.” “As a kid I remember watching Batman and Spider-Man and idolizing superheroes,” he says. “It’s time for kids around the world to see diverse superheroes that reflect our society.”
 

Dominique Morisseau

Playwright

Tony Award-nominated Morisseau is a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Genius Grant for her work as a playwright, which often features black female leads. She wrote the book for “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations,” which opened on Broadway in March, is developing “Undercover” for HBO, is attached to write a feature for Fox Searchlight, and sold her play “Skeleton Crew” to FX. “Work of color in front of and behind is important so there’s not a disconnect with what progress really looks like,” says Morisseau. “Storytelling creates that space of interconnectivity. Everyone has to be included, otherwise it becomes dangerous if we don’t all see each other as connected.”

Steven Canals

Co-Creator of “Pose”

Canals first had the idea for “Pose” 15 years ago when he was a student at UCLA, but was told it wasn’t a fit for TV. Now, co-created with Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, the show has been nominated for two Golden Globes and boasts the largest transgender cast and crew of any scripted series. The show also tackles subjects that are usually not seen onscreen, including trans relationships, drag culture and the HIV/AIDS crisis. “Historically we’ve not seen TV shows portray LGBTQ people of color in positive ways — we’re typically the sassy friend, the fetish or the victim,” Canals says. “I created ‘Pose’ because I was exhausted by the inaccurate depictions of our lives. It’s clear from the reaction to ‘Pose’ that I wasn’t alone.”

A.J. Mayers

Production manager, Lionsgate Home Entertainment Creative Services

Mayers produces AV marketing material for Lionsgate’s library of film and television titles during the post-theatrical windows. He’s also a tireless advocate of LGBTQ+ rights in the entertainment community; as co-chair of Lionsgate Pride, Mayers helped the company achieve a perfect LGBT inclusion score of 100% on the Human Rights Campaign’s corporate equality index, and works closely with the company’s human resources department to create initiatives to promote diversity. “I’m thrilled to be part of a company that embraces every individual, and our HRC perfect score illustrates how Lionsgate supports its LGBTQ+ community,” says Mayers. 

Alexander Almogabar Zahn

Vice president of acquisitions at Sony Pictures Entertainment

Zahn has helped curate a slate of Latinx content for the company across TV and film and is working on several upcoming films with writers from “Jane the Virgin” and “Spanish Affair,” the second-most successful film in Spain’s box office history. “In the coming years, Latinx representation will only gain strength in mainstream media. As the population grows exponentially in the U.S., this group of individuals, which already represents some of the strongest media consumers across the board, will grow to the majority of both the U.S. population and media consumers of the future, he says. “It only makes sense to build content for this base that features modern, positive narratives about life, with all sorts of Latinx faces in leading roles.”

Brett King

Vice president, creative programming, diversity & inclusion for Sony Pictures Entertainment

Identifying opportunities for diverse talent has been the cornerstone of King’s role at Sony and before that, as a programming executive, producer and creative consultant for BET, Disney/ABC Television and Fox Television. He also founded the Sony Pictures Television Diverse Directors Program, which linked women and people of color with opportunities in scripted episodic television. Now in its fifth year, the program counts Barry Jenkins (“Moonlighting”) among its alumni. “Any success we’ve had at Sony Pictures is due to leadership’s recognition that inclusion is no longer simply a moral obligation but rather a business imperative,” says King. 

Chinonye Chukwu

Filmmaker, educator, social justice advocate

In 2019, writer-director Chukwu made history as the first black woman to win the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize with her second feature, the powerful drama “Clemency.” An examination of capital punishment, it holds a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. For Chukwu, the win has many applications. “I think Sundance is an amazing platform for myself as a filmmaker,” she says. “But I think that [the win] means that more black and brown women need access to financing, to platforms like Sundance, to distribution and executive decision-making possibilities, so [that in the future] the first black woman isn’t awarded first prize in 2019, and it won’t be another however many decades before another black woman wins again.”

Cindy Ballard

Chief human resources officer, ICM

As the CHRO at ICM, Ballard works to revolutionize the traditional talent agency business. Under Ballard’s leadership, ICM has transformed its employee referral and internship program, which she says typically perpetuates a lack of diversity in the entertainment industry. Now, the recruiting team follows strict metrics to ensure that new hires represent a wide array of backgrounds. “Diversity has to be woven into and be the fiber of everything that you do in the workplace,” Ballard says. From implementing gender-neutral bathrooms to partnering with such companies as Vault to match students just out of college with loan repayments, Ballard and her team are making it a top priority to make sure anyone can find success within the industry. 

Corrie Christopher Martin

Music Executive Leadership Group, Paradigm Talent Agency

Martin admits that she’s fearless when it comes to raising awareness about the challenges that underrepresented groups face in the entertainment industry. “Why not dive right in, roll up my sleeves, and see what I can do?” she says.  The highly respected veteran music executive, who’s been with Paradigm since 2013, has helped artists such as Imagine Dragons catapult into fame, and is now a member of the agency’s Music Executive Leadership Group. As such, she helped found Paradigm’s Diversity and Inclusion Initiative, which utilizes speaking events, mentorships and training programs as a way to foster inclusion in the workplace. “I feel pretty strongly that everyone who’s had success in our industry has a responsibility to help change the current landscape,” she says. 

Dawn Steinberg

Executive vice president, worldwide talent & casting, Sony Pictures Entertainment

After joining SPT in 2003, Steinberg was promoted in 2018 to EVP, worldwide talent & casting, where she encourages diversity in casting. She is also a member of SPE’s Creative Executive Women’s Leadership Committee, which is dedicated to mentoring other women executives and helping them grow within the company. She worked with casting diverse ensembles including “One Day at a Time,” “Atypical,” and “The Good Doctor.” Steinberg says: “You are trying in every project you have to have our world reflect the real world. ‘One Day at a Time’ was a special show in all of our hearts. Casting that show was magical. We knew when we were piecing that together we had something really special.”

Ellene Miles

Senior vice president of multicultural and intersectional marketing, Sony Pictures

Miles joined Sony PIctures’ marketing team as the first senior VP of intersectional marketing in July and her job is to bring multicultural insights to every aspect of the motion picture group’s advertising campaigns. Whether it’s through research, the creative process, or publicity, Miles says, “there always needs to be an inclusion-focused piece of every puzzle.” One of the first titles Miles tackled within her new role was “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” which she says serves as the perfect example of a diverse end-product that was the result of many conversations surrounding diversity.

Franco Escamilla

Comedian

Before becoming one of the most successful and well-known comedians in Mexico, Escamilla worked as a waiter, traveling singer and radio broadcaster. Now, he has two standup specials on Netflix, “Por la anécdota” and “Bienvenido al mundo,” and more than 4 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. His comedy has taken him throughout Latin America, in addition to performing sold-out shows on several world tours in the U.S., Europe, Japan and Australia. He’s also the founder of La Diablo Squad, a group of comedians and personalities that record podcasts and perform on his YouTube channel, and the name has spread to include his fans across the world. Fellow comedians Gabriel Iglesias and John Milton have collaborated on Escamilla’s videos.

Hanelle Culpepper

Director

As a sci-fi fan her whole life, Culpepper grew up watching “Star Trek: The Next Generation” before coming on board to direct two episodes of “Star Trek: Discovery” on CBS All Access. Now, she’ll be the first female director to kick off a new series in the franchise’s 53-year history by helming the first two episodes of the upcoming spinoff centered on Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard. “Usually as a black female director, they think of us doing a black story or a female story, and there are many directors, like me, who just want to tell stories that are not necessarily black or female,” she says. “I’d be just as excited to direct Michael B. Jordan in ‘Fruitvale Station’ as I would be Tom Hanks in ‘Catch Me If You Can.’”

Hiro Murai

Filmmaker

The Japanese-American director is one of the top rising talents in the industry. Murai recently directed the musical film “Guava Island,” which stars Rihanna and Donald Glover and screened at the Coachella music festival. The director has collaborated with Glover on a number of other projects, including directing the music video for “This Is America,” the short film “Clapping for the Wrong Reasons,” and several episodes of “Atlanta.” Murai has also directed music videos with artists such as the Shins, Flying Lotus, David Guetta and Queens of the Stone Age. He’s also directed several episodes of HBO’s “Barry.”

Jacob Tobia

Writer, producer, author, transgender activist

Tobia has carved a unique and strong voice within the LGBTQI community and beyond. Through their writing and activism, they champion the fight for more inclusive representation and uses their work to educate the audience about gender and sexuality. In their first book “Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story,” they challenged the idea of a strict gender binary. “Through sharing my coming-of-gender story, through elucidating how I was able to own my gender in a world set against it, I hope that other people will begin to question what they take for granted about their gender, too,” Tobia says. The activist is on a mission to ensure gender non-conforming folks can be celebrated by mainstream media. 

Jessica Rodriguez

CMO & president of entertainment, Univision Communications

Rodriguez’s mantra — “You have to make the magic happen” — can also be seen as the guiding philosophy in her efforts to make Univision the leading Hispanic media company in the United States. As CMO and president of entertainment, she plays a crucial role in sharing the company’s culture and vision through content and entertainment development and acquisitions, media planning and strategy, digital and corporate marketing and consumer brand analytics across multiple platforms. She also heads Univision’s Women’s Leadership Council and its Women’s Leadership Academy. “Telling stories of inclusivity and diversity is central to who we are as a company,” says Rodriguez. “And it’s a cornerstone of how we deliver on our mission to inform, empower and entertain Hispanic America.”

Jim Gianopulos and Andrew Gumpert

Content creation council at Paramount

The top Paramount execs are working to increase representation before and behind the screen. Through the newly launched Content Creation Council, created by Gianopulos and Gumpert, a pre-greenlight process will be used to enhance access and opportunities for groups historically underrepresented in the media industry. In the updated process, completed projects are analyzed by the council to establish benchmarks and ensure accountability. “It’s a matter of both good storytelling and remaining relevant to modern audiences that we incorporate distinct voices across all of our divisions,” Gianopulos says. “It’s part of our every day creative process.” 

Jonathan Azu

Music artist manager, founder of Culture Collective 

Azu, a former Red Light manager, left to launch artist management company Culture Collective, which focuses on urban music and representing diverse creative talent. “I wanted to really build a company that has diversity and inclusion as a mission,” says Azu. “I wanted to be an example as somebody that was able to start their own company and be an example for somebody that is coming up in this business that it can be done as well.” Diversity is important because without it, “narratives could be lost and mistold.”

Jose Antonio Vargas

Writer, filmmaker

Four years after winning a Pulitzer Prize for contributing to the Washington Post’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, Vargas disclosed he was an undocumented immigrant in a New York Times Magazine essay in 2011. Since then, he has become an advocate for immigration law, directed an autobiographical film titled “Documented,” and founded Define American, a nonprofit organization. Recently, he helped raise awareness for ICE’s arrest of rapper 21 Savage by creating a video with testimonies from such artists as Kendrick Lamar, SZA and Common. “We’ve broadened our scope to be a full-fledged culture change organization,” says Vargas.

Josh Feldman and Shoshannah Stern

“This Close” creators and co-leads

Feldman and Stern’s first collaborative project “This Close” began as a 15-minute pilot that many Hollywood executives initially passed on due to the show’s all-deaf cast. But after launching a successful Kickstarter campaign that caught the attention of Super Deluxe, the pair was able to produce five webisodes that premiered at Sundance. Now, the two writers, whose own deaf experiences inspired the show, are waiting for its Season 2 premiere on Sundance TV in September. “We wrote every episode, so every single nuance and every single experience that happens onscreen came from our heads,” Feldman says. Stern adds, “The process was and is a deeply personal.”

Lauren Morelli

Showrunner, “Tales of the City”

The showrunner for the upcoming Netflix continuation of the LGBT classic “Tales of the City,” is committed to representing diverse voices. “It felt organic to me to hire an entirely queer writers’ room. It’s important to have people in the room to represent the diversity of what the queer experience might be,” says Morelli. The showrunner got her start as a staff writer in a diverse female-led room on the Netflix show “Orange Is the New Black.” The showrunner stresses that diversity in a writers’ room takes off “a tremendous pressure to represent an entire marginialied community.” Morelli adds, “As storytellers it is our responsibility to reflect the world we’re living in and we can only do that by empowering diverse stories and diverse storytellers.”

Malcolm D. Lee

Filmmaker

Lee’s filmography is more than just light-hearted comedy romps like “Night School,” “Girls Trip” and “The Best Man.” His work as a director-writer and with his production company Blackmaled
consistently brings diversity to the big screen. “The phrase ‘representation matters’ is certainly something that I’ve thought about consciously or subconsciously my entire career,” says Lee. “It has always been my mission to make movies about the African-American experience.” The filmmaker sees a growing acceptance of diversity in the entertainment industry. “People now from different cultures are saying, ‘No, this is my reality and I’m showing the world how I see the world, not how you see me. How I see me.’ And that’s important.”

Marta Fernandez

Executive vice president, original programming, Starz

Since joining Starz in 2007, Fernandez has overseen several original series, including “Spartacus,” “Ash vs. Evil Dead” and “Black Sails.” Now, she has begun to champion more diversity in the premium channel’s slate of shows and helped bring Tanya Saracho’s “Vida” to air. The GLAAD Media Award-winning show follows two estranged Mexican-American sisters who return to their childhood neighborhood and find “gentefied” by a young Latinx community, rather than gentrified. “This show is about sisters, family relationships and what your place is in the world when everything around you begins to change. These are universal things that anyone can relate to,” Fernandez says. “Tanya placed those universal themes in a Latinx family.”

Monica Gil

Executive vice president and chief marketing officer, NBCUniversal’s Telemundo Enterprises

As the EVP and CMO of NBCUniversal’s Spanish-language network Telemundo, Gil has spearheaded multiple diversity initiatives across the brand’s platforms to ensure that Latinos are fairly represented. “The reality is that I want people to see Hispanics as as we are today: We are vibrant, we are dynamic, we are diverse,” she says.  Since creating the channel’s award-winning social responsibility brand El Poder En Ti (The Power in You) three years ago, she’s been focusing on educating the network’s Latin-based viewership on education, health, finance and civic engagement. Under Gil’s direction, initiatives such as the Future Is Us campaign have helped Spanish-speaking viewers understand the U.S. voting process. 

Paul Martin

Chief diversity officer, Sony

Diversity within the entertainment industry can no longer afford to simply be lip service, Martin says. “Our audiences aren’t looking at a show looking for diversity and inclusion — they just notice it when it’s not there,” he says.  “And once that happens, your authenticity becomes questioned.”

As Sony’s chief diversity officer, it’s Martin’s responsibility to make sure diversity is integrated within the workforce, workplace and marketplace. When describing the strategies that Martin and his team employ in pursuit of that mission, the executive says that they utilize an integration, rather than intervention, approach. “This means that a lot of what we do is very subtle, behind-the-scenes but can be extremely impactful over the years.” Sony’s Diverse Directors program is one such strategy, which enables Martin and his team to directly place women and people of color in current projects.

Ramy Youssef

Comedian

With his semi-autobiographical Hulu series “Ramy,” the Muslim American comedian highlights the challenges of being a devout, first-generation Muslim at odds with millennial culture. In a standout episode, titled “Strawberries,” that Youssef wrote and directed, he contrasts the real-life experience of understanding the fallout of 9/11 with his sexual awakening as a young teen. As one of the few shows that touts a mostly Muslim cast and lead actor, most of the storylines are untreaded territory. “We did 10 episodes about an Arab Muslim guy, but there’s so much under the Muslim umbrella that we can’t touch because we don’t have the real estate,” Youssef says. “I could do three seasons of my show and at the end there’d be a bunch of stuff we couldn’t cover.”

Romola Ratnam

Senior director, Endeavor Foundation

Joining the Endeavor Foundation in 2017, Ratnam oversaw the launch of Endeavor Impact, which she describes as “the rubber band that holds together all of the impact activities taking place across the company.” Also considered to be the company’s social responsibility brand, Endeavor Impact focuses on four key pillars (equity, democracy, industry inclusion and sustainability) to stay aligned with the agency’s progressive values. Through educational panels, including those held for Black History Month and International Women’s Day, Ratnam and her team are constantly encouraging conversations surrounding representation. “In the last few years, diversity has changed from being a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘need to have,’ ” Ratnam says. “Consumers want diverse content and they want their stories represented and it’s not an option to ignore it anymore.”

Ruth Carter

Costume designer

“Black Panther” not only gave Marvel Studios its first Oscar wins, but it also made Carter the first African American woman to earn the costume design prize. The colorful superhero outfits helped the fictional African country of Wakanda come to life and they inspired countless Halloween costumes. Carter says choosing a favorite design from the movie was similar to picking a favorite child, but the regal majesty of Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) and the crimson armor of the Dora Milaje warriors stood out to her. “It’s not only a black superhero movie. It moved the culture forward. Wakanda was based on real tribes, so we could learn about culture through ‘Black Panther.’ You can look at someone and feel like they look Wakandan, and that’s a compliment.”

Ryan O’Connell and Jim Parsons

Creator of “Special”; Producer of “Special”

Despite creating “Special” as a semi-autobiographical story about a gay man with cerebral palsy, O’Connell originally wasn’t going to play himself on the Netflix show. “As a marginalized person, you don’t want to take up too much space. It was good enough that I was going to get a show of mine on-air, acting in it would be so greedy,” he says. O’Connell realized that he would be the best person to tell his story, and with the help of Parsons’ That’s Wonderful Productions, they brought the show to life. “As Ryan says in the show, he really is a triple threat,” said Parsons. “He brings us the tale of a human who is on a journey we’ve not seen before.”

Shanique Bonelli-Moore

Executive director of inclusion, UTA

Bonelli-Moore says focusing too much on hot-button issues can oftentimes be ineffective when tackling the entertainment industry’s diversity problems. As the executive director of inclusion at UTA, Bonelli works to foster cultural awareness within the workplace and encourages her clients to produce more representative stories in their work. “In order to create sustainable change, we have to understand the root cause of the issues we face and first work to address them before implementing programs that only focus on the hot button issues,” she says. In doing so, the seasoned executive has spearheaded initiatives such as the 4% Challenge, which encourages Hollywood executives to commit to hiring at least one female director on a project over an 18-month span. 

Talitha Watkins

Motion picture talent agent, CAA

Entertainment industry figures ranging from Cardi B, to Viola Davis’ JuVee Productions and Will Packer Productions look to CAA talent agent Talitha Watkins for guidance and support. Her advocacy also extends to opportunities for both the agencvy and diverse talent: She helped to create CAA Amplify, which brought together artists and executives of color from leading organizations to promote inclusion efforts, and worked on the core thesis of the agency’s Motion Picture Cast Diversity Index, which measured how casting, audiences and box office impacted diversity efforts. “I believe my work at CAA is purpose-driven,” she says.

Victoria Mahoney

Director

After directing several episodes of “The Red Line,” “I Am the Night” and “Gypsy,” Mahoney was tapped to be the second unit helmer on “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” making her the first woman to serve in any directing role in the franchise’s 42-year history. Ava DuVernay, with whom Mahoney worked on “Queen Sugar” and “The Red Line,” personally recommended Mahoney when “Star Wars” director J.J. Abrams was looking for diverse talent for the upcoming Episode IX. “Ava and I share unrestricted levels of joy and ambition for storytelling. Our curiosity to know, compounded with our need to smash ceilings, has always overthrown fear,” Mahoney says. “The biggest lesson I’ve learned working with Ava is to fearlessly speak on behalf of talented individuals whenever industry executives reject an outlier based on inexperience.”

William Chan

Senior vice president, iQiyi

As creator of the new reality TV series “The Rap of China,” Chan is hugely responsible for the rising popularity of the music genre in that country. He also serves as executive producer and senior vice president of iQiyi, a TV and film streaming service provider in China that also produces original content. “There is no boundary line when it comes to music,” says Chan. “Regardless if you can understand the language, the music and the performer can really touch your heart. Therefore, I believe through the communication and development of rap music, the cultural communication between Chinese and other nationalities will only continue to deepen and become more interesting.”

Jennifer Turner

Senior vice president, U.S. scripted program, Sony

As Sony’s only East Coast-based creative executive, Turner’s mission is to promote inclusion and diversity. She works internally with Sony’s casting department and the diversity and inclusion department to bring on diverse actors, writers, and directors. She also has built relationships with New York playwrights and other artists to bring over to television. “One of the things that is critical to diversity and inclusion is access,” Turner says. “We want to tell emotionally resonant authentic stories and emotional resonance comes from authenticity. And authenticity com es from truth and people living that experience. We really need to have people who are diverse included in that process.”

Arturo Castro

Comedian

Created as a web series for Comedy Central, “Alternatino With Arturo Castro” will showcase the “Broad City” actor in more than 45 outrageously outfitted roles in the sketch comedy show. Castro went to great lengths to create each character, from shaving his legs to portray women to wearing an uncomfortable bald cap and fake mustache to play Pitbull. The comedian also wants to show that Latinos can be in roles other than gang members or telenovela stars. “The best I can do for representation is to normalize it,” he says. “Everyone can relate to what it feels like to be awkward on a first date or nervous for a job interview. If you see someone who doesn’t look like you go through that, the next time you see them might create more empathy.”

Latasha Gillespie

Head of diversity, equity and inclusion, Amazon Studios

Gillespie had been at Amazon for two years, heading the diversity initiatives in its corporate department when in November, Amazon head of studios Jen Salke asked Gillespie to join the studio team. “I have the great fortune of helping Amazon build infrastructure mechanisms and content that really supports diversity, equity and inclusion,” says Gillespie, who worked for years in finance before segueing over to film. By working with such artists as Native American producer Heather Rae (“Frozen River”), launching Amazon’s Diversity Film Festival and “developing relationships with underrepresented content builders and finding unique stories that are being told from the underrepresented and intersectional communities,” Gillespie has helped to diversity thrive at Amazon.

Chance The Rapper

Musician

The Chicago-born artist Chance has never been a stranger to activism. Aside from earning three Grammys in 2016 for his third mixtape “Coloring Book” and peaking at number eight on the Billboard 200, he consistently gives back to his hometown through his nonprofit SocialWorks. Since its founding in 2016, Chance’s youth-empowerment charity has donated $2 million to 20 schools in Chicago to fund computer science studies. Other initiatives include Open Mike, which, in partnership with the Chicago Public Library, presents a space for high school kids to artistically express themselves on stage, and Warmest Winter, which raises money and awareness for the homeless community in Chicago.