The Other 50%

Katica Roy is a gender economist and the CEO and founder of Denver-based Pipeline, an award-winning SaaS company that leverages artificial intelligence to identify and drive economic gains through gender equity. Pipeline launched the first gender equity app on Salesforce's AppExchange. The Pipeline platform was named one of TIME Magazine's Best Inventions of 2019 and Fast Company's 2020 World's Most Innovative Companies.

In 2017 Katica was named a Luminary by the Colorado Technology Association, in 2018 a Colorado Governor's Fellow, and in 2019 a Top 25 Most Powerful Woman in Business and a Stevie Entrepreneur of the Year, Gold Award. She is also an industry entrepreneur, thought-leader, and frequent editorial contributor and speaker. Katica's articles have been published by World Economic Forum, NBC, Fast Company, Forbes, Bloomberg, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, The Hill, The Advocate, Salesforce, and Morning Consult. In 2019, her articles garnered over 1B impressions.

If you know me at all, you know how I love talking to someone who is an expert in all things equity. Get ready to dig in.

For this episode, I sat down with filmmaker Eva Doležalová who was riding out the quarantine in Prague. Eva Trained as an actress, filmmaker and writer , but stepped behind the camera as an act of pure will. Her debut film Sound of Sun—starring herself, Suki Waterhouse and Sean Penn­—is a dreamlike telling of what she calls her personal “tale of revelation” beckoning her to film. She purposefully brings a female point of view to filmmaking, creating vibrant experimental works of women’s empowerment such as Somino, Samice and Escape. Her campaigns for French fashion brands are lush examples of translating emotions into moving images, while big-screen thrillers Butcher Boy (2019) and the award-winning Carte Blanche (2019) probe the depths of the human psyche.

Lorena is an award-winning writer-director. Hailing from Queens, Lorena began her journey working on sets at the age of eighteen with directors such as: Martin Scorsese, Sam Mendes, and Ben Stiller. The stories Lorena is most passionate about telling are about the human condition and the complicated facets of life. Lorena feels it's her responsibility as someone who is a woman, Latina, and gay to be a voice to the disenfranchised.

She has directed and produced short films: including Fallen Hero, The Uninvited, The Cure, Alone, and Times Like These. Most recently, Lorena wrote and directed the short film At Last. Lorena has also combined her love for music by directing several music videos, and commercials

For this episode, I got to catch up with Paige Henderson and Nicole Murray. Together, they have Svelte Dog Productions, under which they wrote, produced, and star in the webseries called Dead Friends. They both are from the Seattle area and graduated from the University of Washington, and by a weird coincidence moved to LA at the same time, and became roommates and collaborators. We had a great time doing this, maybe because we recorded this last January, before the world went completely mad.

I caught up with Naomi McDougall Jones to hear about what she's been up to since we last spoke. She has written a book called THE WRONG KIND OF WOMEN: INSIDE OUR REVOLUTION TO DISMANTLE THE GODS OF HOLLYWOOD, and toured with her movie called BITE ME. She's also teaching online filmmaker classes that you should check out: naomimcdougalljones.com/class

Courtney Hope Therond is an award-winning director whose films feature an unapologetically female perspective. She has screened short films at several film festivals and her latest short Rehearsal, which tackles the grey areas of consent, premiered online on Short of the Week and received a Vimeo Staff Pick after playing over a dozen festivals internationally. Her film The Dress You Have On won multiple awards including two jury prizes and is distributed by Revry TV and Seed & Spark. Courtney's digital series Comedic Timing was recently acquired by WhoHaHa and the screenplay for her digital series Between Us Girls was a finalist at Austin Film Festival. Courtney is a graduate of NYU and was a Cinereach Film Fellow. After four years in France, she now directs narrative and branded content in Los Angeles and is currently developing her first feature film

Sophie Max is an actress, writer and producer based in London and trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. She is the writer, executive producer and lead actress in the film The Whole Truth and previous film work includes writing and starring in the award-winning Callie. As an actress, Sophie has been seen across theatre and film in New York and the UK. Sophie is also a poet and her book, lost and found, was published in January 2018 and is available on Amazon worldwide. Sophie is a proud advocate for womxn in the film industry and is passionate about elevating womxn's voices and stories in media. In other words, she has come to the right place.

For this episode, I got to speak with Melissa Center, an award-winning filmmaker & actress, and Tanny Jiraprapasuke, a mindful coach, practitioner, & scholar, who met by chance in Los Angeles, at the National Women's Political Caucus Summer Spritz event. As women in support of other women: they discovered a mutual desire to shift the moral paradigm around closing the gender pay-gap, reevaluating hiring practices, and transforming organizations' cultures.

Melissa and Tanny decided to combine their talents, aligned values, and full dedication to affecting change for good. They are not trying to dismantle "systems," but rather to interrupt the status quo "systems" by offering a new kind of system: Whole Self Systems. Through Whole Self Systems, Melissa & Tanny inspire new ways of communicating, empower ethical leaders (many from marginalized communities), and elevate workplaces that prioritize diversity, gender equanimity, & social innovation.

We spoke earlier this year, before we were all in isolation, but somehow this work seems even more relevant now, as many people are looking inward toward mindfulness and as the world is changing before our very eyes.

Catch a Break has launched season 2. Here is the first episode of season 2 to get you started, featuring Todd and Earl Richey Jones, who got their start on In Living Color.

Ashley got her start starring in the critically-acclaimed film, Something, Anything. She was also featured on 2015 IndieWire's year end critics poll best lead actress list. Ashley is a graduate inTheatre from the University of Tennessee and is passionate about telling stories from the heart. Her goals include bringing to life stories that give light to social issues and connecting with people through cinema. In 2018 her writing and directorial debut came to life with MAGNOLIA & CLEMENTINE that was featured in Amazon Prime's first ever film festival. We spoke remotely, before social distancing was the new normal.