The Other 50%

Today we are doing a deep dive into studio pipeline programs with Karen Horne.

Karen Horne is a senior executive with over 20 years of experience within the entertainment industry. She has been recognized as a Diversity and Inclusion pioneer and pipeline builder. Karen is Senior Vice President, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, North America at Warner Bros. Discovery. In this role she oversees the DEI efforts for creative talent development pipeline programs, workforce, content and production while working closely with the Global Chief Diversity Equity & Inclusion Officer to create a global strategy for the company.

Prior to joining WarnerMedia, Karen spent over a decade at NBCUniversal, where she was Senior Vice President, Programming Talent Development and Inclusion. In this role, Karen was responsible for overseeing in-front-of and behind-the-camera primetime diversity efforts. The programs and initiatives she created and/or developed became the industry's gold standard and a blueprint for many other companies

Horne designed, implemented and oversaw Nickelodeon's Writer Fellowship Program. She was the Director of Writer Development & Special Projects for Walt Disney Studios and Walt Disney Network Television. Previously, she served as Director, West Coast, for the Black Filmmaker Foundation.

Horne was also a Co-producer for the HBO Emmy Award-winning animated series "Spawn."

Her early career includes stints at ABC as the Executive Assistant to the President, ABC Entertainment, as well as positions at ABC Television Network Group and ABC Sports.

Ms. Horne has spoken both nationally and internationally on diversity and inclusion best practices and has been honored with several awards and recognitions for her diversity and inclusion work and her service to underrepresented communities. She serves on the boards of RespectAbility; Montclair State University's School of Communication and Media; USC's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, The Alliance of Women Directors, the Bay Area's Urban League and is a member of several entertainment industry organizations.

We talked about the different kinds of pipeline programs, how they work, and why we still need them.

We are continuing our conversation about inclusion, equity and diversity with Bree Frank, founder of Hue You Know.

As an accomplished Television Executive, and advocate for people of color in media, Bree is passionate about creating opportunities for professionals of all backgrounds.

With over 20+ years of professional production experience, she has produced over 300 hours of unscripted television, including MTV's Room Raiders, TLC's A Makeover Story, and the award-winning television format Wife Swap. She has also contributed to a number of series during a 10-year run in Production Management for ZodiakMedia's New York office.

In 2018, Bree took a leap of faith and moved her family to Los Angeles, CA to begin a new chapter of life. She quickly landed at Matador Content and served as the Executive in Charge of Production, where she managed a robust development slate as well as projects for Disney+, Apple TV+, Crackle, and Showtime. Most recently, Bree was at Hello Sunshine (Reese Witherspoon's media company), as their Senior Vice President of Physical Production for Unscripted where she was tapped four years ago to build out physical production services. Bree has served as an executive on Hulu's Fairplay, Roku's Meet Me in Paris, and Apple's My Kind of Country as well as a healthy slate of brand funded projects . Bree's passion is to tell exceptional stories and move the television zeitgeist forward while championing diversity, equity, inclusion and access.

Bree dropped so much truth in this episode there were a couple of times where I forgot that I had to keep up my end of the conversation - I just wanted to keep listening.

Today I sat down with MyKhanh Shelton, a brilliant DEI practitioner and Attorney.

With more than 20 years of experience as a legal and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) advisor in the media and entertainment industry, MyKhanh Shelton has deep expertise in identifying, evaluating and mitigating legal risks and a proven track record of designing people strategies and systems to attract and retain diverse workforces, and foster inclusive cultures.

From 2020 to 2022, MyKhanh served as Senior Vice President, Enterprise Inclusion for WarnerMedia where she was responsible for leading workforce DEI initiatives for WarnerMedia's global workforce of 30,000 employees, including production safety initiatives across Warner Bros., HBO and HBO max productions.

Prior to WarnerMedia, MyKhanh served as Senior Vice President, Global Inclusion at 21st Century Fox, where she led initiatives to increase diversity and inclusion across the company's 20,000 person workforce in film, television, sports, news and digital businesses. She also advised internal and external partners on matters related to diversity of stories, portrayals, and representation in the entertainment industry. Prior to forming the DEI Center of Excellence, she served the company as Senior Vice President, Fox Group Legal. In that role, she led litigation teams across the US, represented Fox in industry-wide litigation and initiatives, and advised senior executives on a wide variety of employment-related matters.

MyKhanh holds a Bachelor of Arts from UCLA and a Juris Doctor from UC Berkeley. She serves on the boards of Facing History and Ourselves and Promax, and we will learn more about that as well.

We talked about meeting people where they are, using data to inform the work, her particular philosophy of speaking truth to power with love and data.

We are continuing our series of talking with experts who work in various aspects of diversity, equity and inclusion across industries and in entertainment specifically. Today I sat down with Dr. Meghan Burke. We talked about how white people can approach this work without getting hung up on feelings of shame and guilt and centering ourselves. None of that is particularly helpful. We also examined the notion of being "Colorblind" when it comes to race. What's wrong with that?

Dr. Meghan Burke is a sociologist and author of three books about contemporary racism and whiteness, most recently the book Colorblind Racism. She was an award-winning teacher, scholar, diversity advocate, and advisor during her 15 years working as a professor at a small liberal arts college, where for 10 years she co-developed and directed an innovative program designed to equip white students with an understanding of equity, inclusion, and intersectionality so that they could effectively work as partners in DEI efforts.

She also traveled around the country offering keynote talks and workshops for communities looking to deepen their commitments to racial and social justice through interrogations of whiteness. Meghan left higher education in 2021 for a career in industry, utilizing her social science research skills and her subject matter expertise to drive positive change for companies that serve the common good.

We talk about how it is to show up as a white person doing the work of dismantling racist systems. A theme you'll hear repeatedly is it's not if and whether, but when and how. That will make sense soon.

Let's talk about trauma and production. How does the stress affect you over time? Stress affects all people, but it isn't evenly distributed across all people. And what happens when it accumulates without being addressed? (I have a story that was not my finest moment.) Dr. Thelemaque helps us to unpack it and gives us some strategies to cope.

Dr. Tanisha Thelemaque is a licensed psychologist with over a decade of experience furthering equity-focused initiatives. Her research interests have focused on the mental health impacts of racial discrimination on Black Americans with an emphasis on the intersections of trauma and gender.

Currently, Dr. Thelemaque owns a Bay Area therapy practice in addition to holding numerous roles within the psychological community. She works with renowned mental health organizations including the National Center for PTSD as a mobile applications tester, content writer, and subject matter expert on issues of race; she maintains a leadership role within the California Psychological Association as the Chair-Elect of the Division for Diversity and Social Justice. Additionally, she collaborates with individuals and various organizations as a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant. Her focus is on developing psychologically safe, trauma-informed work environments and navigating racial trauma in people of color.

Today we are kicking off our series of talking with experts who work in various aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion across industries and in the entertainment industry specifically. First up is Dr. Kira Banks. DEI work is "so hard" in entertainment and it's also "not hard at all." What's the deal? And why is it so hard for an industry who sees themselves as such good people to face the systemic racism they are swimming in?

Dr. Banks' decades of experience allow her to make complex and controversial topics accessible in schools, communities, institutions of higher education and corporations. She co-founded the Institute for Healing Justice and Equity at St. Louis University, where she has a professor in the Department of Psychology.

In addition, she has published over 20 articles in peer reviewed publications. And she has contributed to the Harvard Business Review, the Atlantic and the Guardian. She received her BA from Mount Holyoke College where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and her MA and PhD are from the University of Michigan.

Today, Dr. Banks has a podcast called "Raising Equity" to support adults in talking to kids about systems of oppression. She's also a co-principal of the Mouse and the Elephant, which develops customized curriculum to meet organizations' long-term needs.

On a personal note, I have learned a tremendous amount from Dr. Banks and I am thrilled she agreed to do this podcast, and I'm so excited for you to get to meet her and hear what she has to say.

It has been awhile since I dug into this podcast, and it's been never since I did a solo episode talking about myself. A lot has happened over the last few years that I want to share with you. Then, I'm rebooting and launching another series of episodes, this time mostly focused on diversity, equity and inclusion work. Come along for the ride.

This is part two in a series of interviews with the leadership of the Women's Production Society. The WPS is an organization of physical production executives across the industry. It started as a small cocktail party and has since grown to more than 100 members and is a powerful force of change within the industry with the purpose to fulfill their mission statement: To promote the hiring of women in leadership roles in Film, Television and New Media.

In the last episode, I talked with the group's founding members Dana Belcastro and Debra Bergman. And today I am talking with Jeanette Volturno, producer and entrepreneur, and Cristen Carr Strubbe, producer turned physical production executive, who are the current leadership of the group. You can hear Jeanette's origin story in episode 111 of this podcast and Cristen is on episode 15. Now, it you can't find these episodes on your podcast feed, you can find them on the website, which is theotherfiftypercent.com all spelled out in letters.

In this episode we talk about where the WPS is now, how they weathered the covid of it all the last couple of years, and what they plan to do going forward.

I have a couple of really special interviews to share with you. Both are with the leadership of the Women's Production Society. The WPS is an organization of physical production executives across the industry. It started as a small cocktail party and has since grown to more than 100 members and is a powerful force of change within the industry with the purpose to fulfill their mission statement: To promote the hiring of women in leadership roles in Film, Television and New Media. And this time we are in, where women are literally losing power over our very bodies, it is more urgent and important than ever that women take on leadership roles of influence and take deliberate action toward impacting our world.

This first interview is with the founding members Dana Belcastro and Debra Bergman. Both came up as producers and now both are executives. To get their full stories, I will refer you back to episodes 108 and 109 of this very podcast where we do a deep dive into both of their herstories. In today's episode they walk us through the origin of the Women's Production Society and what they are looking to do next as they hand the reins over to the next leadership of the group.

This episode is very special and very bittersweet. You may remember when I spoke with Jaret Martino and Pat Branch when they made the short called Stronger than Pretty. Well, they are back because the feature film version, Donna: Stronger than Pretty is about to have its worldwide release on February 23rd, after a great festival run. I also had the honor to talk to Donna Martino herself, Jaret's mom, who's story the film tells. We recorded this last February on the weekend of its festival premiere, where it won basically all the awards. It was impossible to know at the time that Donna would be diagnosed with cancer very shortly afterward, and she passed away on September 3rd of 2020. As you will hear, Donna was a remarkable woman and mother and Jaret's tribute to her in the form of this film will inspire you, as it has inspired me.

Pat and Jaret co-wrote the script, and Jaret directed it. I start out talking with Jaret and Donna, and Pat joins later on, fresh from an awards ceremony where she was collecting all the trophies. I'm so happy for them for the success of this film and what a beautiful tribute it is to Donna and her story of strength and perseverance.