The Producers Guild of America has revealed the graduates from their 15th annual Power of Diversity Master Workshop. 14 producers representing eleven projects in TV, film, and documentary have completed the eight-week workshop, led by PGA member Chairs Sasheen R. Artis and Matt Johnson.
The workshop, which is free and open to members and non-members of the PGA, aims to boost producers of underrepresented communities and trains them on skills that are paramount to a producer’s success, from pitching, to film financing, to distribution, with the help of an all-star roster of speakers and teachers. The Power of Diversity Master Workshop is free and open to members and non-members of the PGA.
For the duration of the Workshop, the Power of Diversity Master Workshop participants worked with 22 PGA member mentors to develop their pitch and prepare their projects for the marketplace.
The graduates from the 2019 Power of Diversity Master Workshop include:
- Nathan Bennett with the Jordanian teen feature, The Camp Beauty Queen
- Samantha Culp with the docu-series, The Futurists
- Gabriela Gonzalez & Candy Ibarra with the TV comedy, Mentiritas (Little White Lies)
- Zimran Jacob, with the Indian mythology fantasy series, The Queen and the Goddess
- Tricia Lee with the trans-gender led feature, Mother-Daughter
- Monice Mitchell Simms with the football rom-com, SACKED
- Sade Oyinade & Deshawn Plair with the female-centric feature, Better Than I Know Myself
- Diana Romero with the female-driven police procedural, SOLD
- Widad Shafakoj with the Syrian war crimes documentary, Caesar (Tsar)
- Justine Wentzell with the tweenage TV comedy, Identity Crisis of a Banana
- Delbert Whetter & Jevon Whetter with the deaf teen coming of age feature, Flash Before the Bang
PGA Workshop participants have gone on to produce top television shows and major films, including LaToya Morgan (two-time NAACP Image Award-nominee for Turn: Washington’s Spies, Into the Badlands), Aaron Rahsaan Thomas (S.W.A.T., Sleepy Hollow, CSI: NY, Southland), Ben Lobato (Ice, Queen of the South, Justified), Hollie Overton (Shadowhunters, The Client List) and Sarah DiLeo (Bless Me, Ultima).
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