Changing the Narrative

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hi everyonemy name is vivian schiller and i’m theexecutive director of aspen digital weare a program of the aspen instituteover the course of the last few monthswe’ve been running a series of programslooking at race through the lens of themediawe’ve looked at race to the lens of thenews mediaand through book publishing as well bothare industries which have a long way togo today in partthree of our changing the narrativeseries we’re turning our attention tofilmed entertainment by and about peopleof colorin many ways this is an area of mediathat’s seen the greatest advancementtv shows are a lot more diverse thanthey were even three years ago accordingto several recent studiesmeeting obviously some increased demandand in fact of all the shows thatdebutedin 2019 just last year more of themfeatured diverse casts and themes thannotso that’s some really good progress andyetthere’s a long way to go for instancewhen it comes to directingonly 15 percent of the top box officemovies were directed by people of colorand this year only eight percentof major and mid major studios havepeople in coloracross any sea level position soclearly there’s much still to be doneand that’s what we’re going to talkabout todaywe are really lucky to have a fantasticpanel i’m going to introduce them injust a minutebut first let me just give you a littlebit of an idea of what we’re going to dothis houruh i’m going to uh in a minute after iintroduce the panelists we’re going tobring them onand we’re going to have a conversationum the five of us i’ve got somequestions for themand i can’t wait to hear what they haveto say but while i’m doing thatplease get your questions ready becausein the back half of the hour we’re goingto be takinguh i’m going to be bringing those to ourpanelistsso what you do you’re probably all zoomexperts by nowbut if you click on um if you go down tothe bottom of your screen you’ll see abutton that says qa just click on that pleaseenter your question there i’m not goingto be calling on you i’m going to bereading your questionfor you we would appreciate it if youcould also include your name and youraffiliationuh just because it adds great context ifyou want to say where you’recoming to us from that’s great too andwe’ll get to your questions later butyou can enter them like i said anytimeokay let me introduce our panelists wehaveuh jill dickerson she is the head ofunscripted originals for snapthat’s the parent company of snapchatand she’s leading the development oftheir docuseries and unscripted videosshe most recently was the senior vicepresident for programming anddevelopmentat own that’s the oprah winfrey networkshe’s alsoa governor for the reality peer group ofthe academy television arts and sciencesthat’s the oscars to you and me johngibsonis the vp of external and multiculturalaffairs forthe motion picture association heestablished their programwow many years ago already now thatpromotes and highlights the associationand its member studiosmulticultural initiatives and managesthe mpa’s partnershipswith national civil rights andmulticultural groupswe have sama tanara who is the senior vpof enterprise inclusion and contentstrategiesfor warner media that’s a new role forher we’ll hear more about that shortlyshe is responsible for facilitating theadvancement of equity and inclusionin storytelling across the company priorto joining warner media she was seniorvp of comedy developmentand current programming for fox she isthe president of the board of film tofuturewhich is a not not for uh not-for-profitproviding equitable accessto the entertainment industry forunderrepresented la youthand finally wynn rosenfeld he is thepresident ofmonkey paw productions he oversees themonkeyproductions um which of course is jordanpeele’suh uh company that he founded togetherwith othersuh wynn oversees the company’s diverseslate of film and television productionsand is executive producer of thetwilight zone and huntersand a producer on monkey pro’s upcomingfilmcandyman for which he is also co-wrotethe screenplay along with jordan peeleand the film’s directorprior to joining the company wynn workedfor anumber of different outlets including atnbc and elsewhere with me so i’ve knownwind for some time and i’m so thrilledtosee them here today okay we are going toget starteduh we’ve we’ve got everybody now with usso welcomethank you um for being with us um solet’s just dive right into theconversation um summoner i’m gonna be uhbegin with youso you’re you’re new to warner media umin a new positionum so what practices are you planning toimplement to diversifyprogramming across warner media againfocused onfilm and and television awesome thanksfor having me it’s souh awesome to be here um solisten there’s a lot of things thatwe’re doing but i should start with thefact that i justrecently got here and there’s been a lotof great work being done herebefore i even got here we had so manyaccess programs for our writersand directors and and producers and somany things across the board that wewere working on we had thewb writers program and hbo access so somuch great work that’s already beendone you know at the company um as we’removing forwardour goal is truly just to scale thisglobally honestlyum it’s not just about marginalizedaudiences here in the us but as we moveto a global business it’s aboutmarginalized audienceseverywhere and how do we look at our thetalent that we’re working withi’m so happy to be on a panel with wynnwho we’re already working withand the great work that they’re alreadydoing for us with lovecraft country sofor us it’s really about amplifying thealready good work that we’re doing overat warner media between hboand the turner networks and you knowit’s so fun to have sports andall the other different um opportunitiesto amplifyvoices throughout our company great andwhat were youuh you know you of course were mostrecently at fox whatlearnings from your work at fox do youplan to bring over to warner mediawell i think it’s a little bit ofeverything i mean you knowthe reason why i went to fox in thefirst place was because ofin living color because of animation andall the different opportunities toyou know bring different voices to theforefronti think that the programming changedhonestly as i was leaving there but thereason why i went there was because theywere the originalpurveyor of marginalized voices in a lotof ways right like i mean some of myfavorite shows and even while i wasthere you know weyou know did a lot of great work but youknow i’mi’m personally very very proud of thework we did with mindyand with you know brooklyn nine-nine andyou know it’s been an incredibleexperience and i thinkthe thing that that taught me is thatthere’s still an audience for comedyspecifically and i think the other thingthat it taught me is that you knowwe know how to if you if you bring somereally greatcontent forward you can get largeaudiences if you really think aboutin broadcast television we got peoplecoming live same dayto a lot of shows so i thinkum one thing that i’m really excitedabout with taking my experience from thelinearnetwork and bringing it over here towarner media is going to be really funbecause um a lot of people are thinkingabout the streaming game but i stillcare about the linear business and ithink there’s a huge business to be hadthereyeah great thanks well since youmentioned working with wynn when i’lli’ll go to younext so you know monkey paw has justbeenreally i feel like on the vanguard whenit comes to showsand movies uh about and certainly bypeople of color and really a genrebuster in many ways i mean get outto me was downright subversive in itsapproach to dealing with racismi mean i feel like it started somethingof revolution so howare you at monkey pro approaching thekind of stories you tell and how youtell themi think for us it’s always going to beabout specificityright and the lesson for monkey paw isthatthere’s not the you know by the way alsothank you for havingme too i’m really excited about janiceuhi think it’s i think it’s aboutspecificity i think theum you know as a i think there’s a lotof incentive in hollywoodto approach um the business from thissort offour quadrant idea right that like howcan i do something that’s very verybroadand uh and and check off boxes and tryto speak to as many people as possiblevia that and i thinkyou know for for monkey paw it’swe we beg to differ is for us itfeels like if you treat an audience assmart and curious then you can tellvery specific nuanced stories from veryauthentic points of views from verysingular storytellerswho come with their own culturalexperience and trust them to do thatand i think audiences will lean in andby the way i think the evidence pointsto thatbeing true and and so i mean i get outcertainly we’re part of that andwe’re proud to be part of that um partof that tradition butum we’re also really gratefuljust as fans of movies and television toseesuch an explosion in the things that wewatch at homeum that i think take that take that toheartyeah i mean clearly just based on thework that uhthat monkey has been putting out i meanit’s certainly not pandering to any kindofstandard of oh this is going to appealto a broad audience i rememberyou telling me about get out before itcame out anddescribing it and i was like you’re likewell it’s kind ofabout race but it’s kind of a horrormovie but it’s also kind of funny i waslike uh-huhuh-huh good luck with that and so youknow obviously what do i knowuh but you know that kind of specificitythat you talk about reallykind of speaks to the the audience isthat that’s continues with the filmsthat you’re in television you’re doingnowtell us 100 well i mean you know likeuh something like um i mean i can’tthat’s a lot i can’tactually talk about but just to sayspeaking oh come on you could tell usuh speaking sort of speaking broadly youknow uhabout about our work i mean it’s likeyou know there’s athere’s there i think so a film that iscoming out was actually supposed to comeout this year but because uh it turnsout that there’s thisglobal pandemic going on have you guysall heard about this uh we couldn’tcouldn’t make it to thedidn’t make it to the theaters yet andso it’ll be next year and it’s calledcandymanand i mean that is a uh that is a moviethat isa uh a sort of a love letter it’s kindof the closest thing we’ve ever done tolike a rebootor a sequel to uh a sort of esotericmovie from from the 90s that just usedto scare thescare the pants off of jordan and myselffor a long time andwe thought it was time to to um wethought there was something we could sayabout it and sort of reclaim some of theproblematics of that filmand uh but also i think forward some ofthe core messagesuh in that movie and hopefully also beas scaryas not scarier than the original and ithink inyou know and so in partly in buildingthat team and building that story whatwe found wasthe more that we leaned into the reallike so it takes place in chicago rightso like really making sure thatwe the thing was shot in chicago that wehadchicagoans in the film through andthrough that we were really making wewere we werereally immersing ourselves in what itmeant to benot just chicago in the in the the broadsense of like you know deep dish pizzabut really what is the experienceof um what is the black experiencein chicago and how is that different umthan the white experience and even morespecificallylike what was it like in the housingprojects at that timeand how what are the repercussions umwhat have been in the repercussions ofthatand so i guess it’s sort of i guess theanswer to your question is that i thinkwhat we found isalways we always get rewarded when wetake out thethe microscope when we try to reallyfind who are the real voices who canreally speak for this work and so ithink you’ll see that across everythinganduh and we have a lot of exciting stuffcoming out over the next few yearsand um you know we we want to make surethat that the stories that we’re tellingare told by people who they have to tellitthey have to be the person and and uhniacosta thefilmmaker um of candyman it lived andbreathed umso much of what’s going on in that filmand it’s really a it was really uskind of letting her do her thing umbecause she she crushed it that’s that’sawesomeum so uh jill i want to come to youum i know i know you’re you’re now atsnap and we’ll come to that in a littlebit but i want to ask you about yourdecade-long experience in programmingdeveloping atown and and talk to us there about sortofthe roots at own of developing contentfor diverse audiences or about themesthat that that touch uponunderrepresented communities and how andhow did you approach that workwell you know it’s fascinating becausewhen i first started own thank you forinviting me today as well of coursei’ll just assume you’re all happy to behere i’ll just if it’s okayyou’re good uh but when i first startedthere you knowthe demo that we were going after wasthe same demo that had done so well i’mgoing to change my light a little bitsorry about thatbut that they had focused on more on theoprah winfrey show which was women25 to 54. but after a couple of yearsof looking and doing market studies andseeing where the opportunities were werealized that the people who were leastrepresentedacross unscripted which is my field umon televisionwere african-americans and there was anopportunity there totry to figure out how to tell diversestories not just to say ohwe can do we can do the lowest hangingfruit we can show peopleyou know screaming at each other and youknow being dramatic but how do you showdiversity within diversityso for us that became the biggestchallenge and the biggest goal and thebiggest opportunityum and for and it was exciting to startwith you know shows like welcome tosweetie pieswe started with african-americanfamilies and then to move into showsabout relationshipswhen we did a series called black lovethat was a documentary series focusingon african-american relationshipsall the way from newlyweds throughpeople who’ve been married for 70or 80 years that was where i think wereally discovered the sweet spot offiguring out how to tell stories of alldifferent varietiesbecause what we were trying to do wascounteract the stereotypescounteract the popular notions of whatit means to be black what it means to beblack in america what it means to beblack in a relationshipand when you don’t assign yourself theproject of just gettinga quota a certain number of storiesabout people of colorbut instead allow yourself a panoply toallow yourself to create a fulllandscapethat’s where you start to do the jobthat i think we need to do i think thatanother thing that we discovered wasreally important for us wasyou know in addition to working with thetraditional companies that we knew andlovedwho everybody was working with werealized we had to go out and make surethat if we wanted to tell black storieswe were finding black writers findingblack producers finding blackstorytellersand also empowering young productioncompanies that maybe hadn’tproduced anything else before you knowmaybe they were green and by the waythere are green production companies ofevery single background i’ve worked witha lot of them they all need handholdingthey all need help they all need theopportunityto make some mistakes but figure outhow to tell their stories with greatpartners so we were also very proud thatfor the majority of ourunscripted shows you know we wereworking with eithershow runners of color or we wereactively sourcing out productioncompanieswith executives of color or that wererun by people of coloryou know obviously i was in you know thevery fortunate position of beingat a network that was headed up by mswinfrey a woman of colorbut that doesn’t mean that that thesethings are obviousit doesn’t mean that you don’t have tokeep trying and it doesn’t mean that youdon’t continuallylook to source the pipeline frankly youknowand so at the end of the day we alwaysand people always say oh but you know doyoui mean are you gonna pick the bestperson for the job at the end of the daywhen it comes to telling storiesthe best people for the job are thepeople who have a personal connection tothose storiesso we would always look for ways toincorporate them into that processand empower them yeah it’s a livedexperienceand how do you and and how do you thinkwith the shows that you were developingthere how did you think about theaudience who whowho was the audience that you intendedfor these shows and thenand then who turned out to be theaudience umso you know that’s where we go back tothe demographics of it all soin the in the beginning it really waswomen 25 to 54 of all backgrounds thatwe were looking at but our earlyresearch showed us that there was adifferent audience for the talk showthan there was forradio programming with ms winfrey thanthere was for o magazinethen there would potentially be for acable network and so once we understoodwho was watchingwe knew okay well then let’s cater tothat audience and you know one of ourearliest exercises that i lovedwas we all went to you know this thisretreat for the weekend and was winfreywas thereand the marketing team had put togetherpocket books and every single pocketbookfor every tablehad you know maybe a bible in it or somecookies or a magazinethings that would describe who thatviewer might be so that we could reallyimmerse into who are these people whofollow her who are these people who areinspired by herbrand of storytelling and how can wespeak better to them how can we makesure that we’re not onlytelling stories we want to tell buttelling stories that they want to hearbecause that’s another bigpiece of this is it’s not about what wewantit’s about you know she would always sayyou’ve got to meet the audience wherethey’re atand the goal would be to figure out whatstories they were invested inwhat stories they wanted to learn aboutyou know what parts of themselves theyfelt weren’t being represented or shownand to find ways to do that so there wasalways you knowa great amount of intentionality behindit when we would have people come in togive pitchesthe first question would always be whydo you want to tell the story and why doyou need to tell it now what’s theintention behind itno it’s interesting both you and wyntalking about that incredible passionand that burning need to tellthat particular story or see thatparticular vision throughum john i want to um turn to you uhnow so you’re with the motion pictureassociation you might want to brieflyexplain what that isuh for folks who don’t know but tell ushow you’re working with your the memberstudios to addressyou know the pipeline recruitmentopportunities from underrepresentedcommunities in the industryboth you know but uh behind the sceneson cameraand and in terms of the stories thatthey’re tellingthanks vivian and again thank you forhaving me so the motion pictureassociation formerly the motion pictureassociation of america is the tradeassociation of theglobal film and tv industry global filmtv and streaming industryspecifically our members are the fivelegacy studios at netflix we havenetflixwe have disney paramount sony universaland warner brothersso we work in the advocacy arm we’reheadquartered here in washington dcwhere our studios and our largestoffices in la dla areaso what i do back in 2012 i createdour inclusion and multicultural outreachprogram which is now morphed intoour diversity equity and inclusionprogram uh why and it’s important toknow we did that three years beforeuh ostrich hawaii five years before metoo and time’s upi grew up in washington dc i grew up inthe parks that when you see movies andshows about the cityyou don’t see my community and even whenthere were showsagain you didn’t see my community youdidn’t see the diversity of it youdidn’t see the complexity of itand film and tv always had reallyimportant part in my myyou know my growth they were escapismaspirationally inspirational so afterdoing civil rights and corporate socialdiversity responsibility and corporatediversity when i got to usda i meansorry to npa in 2012one of the things i wanted to know waswere there people that looked like mefrom marginalizedcommunities on these studio lots workingon diversity inclusionwe didn’t hear about them but i feltthat there had to be they had to bethereand i found out that they are that theywere feverishly working on this butit wasn’t apparent to the public andthey weren’t telling their stories and isay this a lotour studios tell incredible stories butthey don’t always effectivelytell their story so my program helps todo thatand again eight and a half years laterwe have almost 45 multicultural partnersmany of themthe leading multicultural film festivalsin the country like the american blackfilm festivalnew york latino film festival georgialatino film festival and i’m on thoseboardsto work you know i work on this issueevery single dayand so if this was eight years ago wecould talk about yeah our studios aremoving butin 2020 every single one of them have aninclusion wenot just in title alone but they’reworking holisticallythroughout the entire studio ecosystemso when projects are being greenlit theynow have to meeta certain quota of let’s look at thediversity of thisis it if it’s portraying a community isit authentic is it culturallyauthentic representation of thatcommunity are people from that communityinvolved in this and that’s importantthe end of the day people justsimply want to see themselves they wantto see the very best themselves and evenafter portrayal communities are notalways prettybut you have to balance that with theinspirational and the aspirationand really what’s existing so you haveto have folks in the writing roomsthat look like these communities youhave to have directorsfrom these communities you have to havecasting agentsfrom these communities so we work withall of these groups we collaborate withour studiosand support we’re telling the story inwashington and beyondbut it really will take the entireecosystem to holisticallywork on this this is a very importantissue and but we all have to work on ittogetherand what resistance are do you meet youknownow in 20 so i’m not facing anyresistance it is anddidn’t equate it this way you you’re inwashington so you understand thisthe federal agencies are massive and ittakes time to turn things within themour studios are also massive and this isa hundred plus yearold industry so really now it is thereare experts on every studio lotand then you have partners it really isgiving voice to these people i don’tthinkthis will need to bring in consultantsbecause they’re really smart peoplethere and so noweven in the last five years all of theleadership of our studios has completelychangedand all of them have a commitment todiversity equity inclusion because oneit’s just a business imperative we knowthat filmsthat show diverse tasks make moneypoint-blank period and again people willflock to seethemselves and you know minoritycommunities particularly the latinxcommunity they overindex ins and going to the uh to thetheaters to support our projectsso we have to do a better job of makingsure that we showcase themboth on in front of the screen andbehind the screen and that we’re alsogiving voiceto tell those stories right and wehaven’t seen that kind of increasedrepresentation of of the latinxcommunityand i’d be curious to hear from from anyof the panelists as to why that iswe have seen tremendous improvement interms ofblack workers representation but less soyou knowlet me jump on it because uh of our 45partners 11 of them are latinxand it was not due to any study andagain i also mentionedwhen i launched this program wasn’t dueto any congressional orpressure from the civil rights groups itwas just a natural evolution of how wework with our studiosso i look at when you look at what 2015and 16 did forhashtag oscar so white you look at what7did for me two and times up i reallyfelt strongly that the fourth quarter of2017 is where we were really healinghittingfocus on the latinx in 2018 andobviously nine times19. um again as one mentioned kobe justwrecked a lot of thingsi really think we saw some incredibleprojects coming outbut even if you look at what’s happeningon network tv and withthe streaming platforms again progresshas made a lot of progress has made butwe have such a far way to go it is amarathon racewe don’t see the finish line but we’restill working fast towards it so i dobelieveat least for our members that everysingle one of them is focused on gettingthat latinx content out there becauseagainthey’re the largest minority populationthey need to see themselvesin the best possible life not juststereotypesyeah simon i’d i’d i’d love to hear yourobservations too aboutum about not just reaching butreflectingum the latinx experience and then i wantto ask you another question after thatabout the audiencesure i mean i think it’s a businessimperative just you know as john wassaying and i think that about everyaudience i don’t think that just aboutthe latinx audience i do think that wearein a very very interesting time in theworldbut i also think like it’s just thenumbers like if you look atany single like census number like wejusthave to reflect those audience and we’vebeen talking about itum and honestly we’ve been we weretalking about it at foxand and i it’s been a passion of mineall throughout my career and like justlooking at whatyou know you know how we wanted toreflect the audience of brooklyn andlike as we setthings in specific places how do we makesure that we’re representing theaudience in the most authentic way butalso in an aspirational wayi think you know with lots of spookiesand like different things that we’recurrently doing and also thisyou know as we continue to move into youknow direct to consumer experience andla down right like i think that for usit’s really about who’s the besttalent to speak for that audience firstand foremost and how do we create thebest premium content for that audienceandyou know i couldn’t be more thrilled tobe at a company to inherituh in the heights so for me it’s like wewant to do thatwe have it’s been a part of the strategyand i just got here but likei came here because of that and i’m soexcited to be at a company that has putthat first and foremostyeah i mean as john mentioned there isthere there clearly was sort of an unmetor not not completely fulfilled demandonthe part of the audience uh which whichhas to speak to why some of the some ofthe success of why we’re seeing theentertainment industryuh making faster improvements than otherforms of mediabut i wonder if do you how do you thinkaboutuh reaching diverse audiences whetherit’syou know black or latinx or indigenousor othersuh versus um uhor or not verses at the same time asthinking aboutportraying those experiences for allaudiences including white audienceslisten i’m on an inclusion team becauseit’s about being inclusive that’s justthe bottom linei think that we live in the u.sit is still an audience that ispredominantly white at thisvery moment and to me i don’t want todiscount that audience that’s a hugeaudience that i want to reach sowhen i think about like the content andthe strategy for that content it’s aboutmaking box office type materialacross the board how do you make surethat you’re reachingeven if you’re telling the story of thelatin xlike a latinx story or an indian storyor a black story orgod forbid we go multi-racial guys youknowlike i think yeah i mean like for melikeuh my passion like i i remember likeuh i always remember hearing the storyjust like even jordan peele coming intofox right withjordan and and keegan coming into foxlike to methat they were doing something ahead ofthe curve and it wasan incredible thing i’m sad i missed itbut at the same time when i lookforward i’m like that’s what the futureis like when you look at the future ofour country it’s going to be a littletinted like i think that the way that ii just look forward is like how do wejust tell very specific and authenticstories that reach a broad audiencebecause at the end of the day you wantto educate a full audience not justone specific like so if this specificstory and an authentic storycan i think the best ones always reachthe broadest audiences and i always talkabout crazy rich asians i’m like yesit was a cast of asians howeverit was a romantic comedy we’re telling avery relatable story that people wantedto hear at that timetoday in a time where honestly they’rejust not a lot of romantic comediesthat’s the audience you’re going afterat the end of the dayright jill i think i think you all havesomething oh we’vetouched their nerve here so jill um i’mgonna call on you first and then win andthen johngo ahead jill thank you this is such ahuge important topic and yeah and someas you were talking it was like my youknow synapses were firingthe thing is we don’t live in asegregated world and i think it’s toomuch of content too much of televisionand it’s been on networks i’ve worked onit’s been onprime time networks that we watch allthe time you see a story but it’s ablack story and the whole family’s blackand there’s maybe one black characteror it’s an indian story and there’s oneyou know latino characteri started on the real world i love thatshow for a reason that show had like a5.0 rating for a reason in the hawaiiseasonbecause it was cast with diversitybecause that’s who we arethat’s who we see when we look out ofour apartment doors or down ourneighborhood streetsthat’s who we went to school with youknow that’s who we’re married to that’swho’s in our familiesso i think we need to work a lot harderto stop you knowisolating these stories and putting theminto different groups and just focusingon the humanity againsomebody mentioned to me once they saidthat you know if robert altman makes afilm it’s all about humanityhuman characters if spike lee makes afilm it’s all about the black experiencethat has to stop because that projectsinto the way people market the filmit creates the way people see the filmand that’s not what we are doing asstorytellers we are telling storiesabout the human conditionand whether it’s a romance in in hongkongor i mean that was in hong kongsingapore but or whether it’s you knowsomebody whose house burns down we areall the same and we feel it the sameso for me i feel you know throughout mycareer the goal has been to justfind great stories but i would say weneed to work betterat snap for example to be even morediverse we have a lot ofafrican-american stories that weretotally getting heldwe’ve told a lot of you know caucasianstories we’ll continue to do sobut latinx is a huge market i neverforget the asian market i never forgetindigenous peoples americans and fromother parts of the countryor the world and i think the challengeis if you don’t have executives fromthose backgrounds sometimesthose stories get overlooked and if youdon’t or maybe can’t afford to getexecutives because you can only have acertain number of executivesthen you have got to reach out toproduction companies that are run bythose groupsyeah i think that’s why that statisticwe talked about at the very top of thehour abouthow few of the c-suite are people ofcolor because everything you’re sayingmakes sense but if you don’t have thechief marketing officerand the executives in charge ofdistribution and the way that theyposition the film and the way that theydo projections for you know financialprojections for the filmyou know how do you get those out ofthose sort of silos that you’re talkingabout going oh this is a black film forblack audienceswhen i know you had something to say imeanwhat jill said i guess is kind of what iwas going to say i mean iit’s you know i i really can’t reallyadd to that other than just to sayum i think you have to be careful to nottreatany any um any any grouplike a monolith and that you can get indeep deep trouble when you’reprogramming for specifically for wellthis is going to be a black film aboutbut like i think there’s there’s there’sthat’s the other side ofauthenticity and i think that if we’regoing to try to have ummeaningful um projects they they thattouch peopleand endure the test of time which iscertainly what we endeavor to doum i think jill’s right this is theseare this is about the human conditionthis is these areart right is about what kind of umbrings ustogether in some ways that we’re seeingourselves in each other and i thinkjordan would say you know part of why umsomething like get out resonated withaudiences with all audiencesis that people saw themselves in chrisand the protagonist andthey said oh god that that person’s meand that’s true for peopleof all races and and genders in americaand um also for people in korea andwe’re allall around the world there were somethere was something essentially humanabout about that story and so i thinkthat doesn’t preclude the no the ideathat umrepresentation is what made thatimportant that he wascertainly speaking from the blackexperience but i do think it’s importantto make sure that we’rewe’re remembering we we we allhave feelings and making our art aboutthat i thinkis really important but you are i meanas a production company you arebeholden to distributors televisionnetworksyou know the over the top streamingservices to you know license or by torun your filmsdo you not run into i mean you must getthe questionswho who is the audience who is this whois this program for who is this movieforwho are you trying to reach i mean howdo youhow do you think about that ouryou’re right we we do get that questionsometimes umand i our answer is almost alwayseverybodyi mean as you know is that our as we arewe thisi remember jordan said in a meeting oncea while ago probably speaking slightlyout of school here is likeain’t no boutique about it you knowthere’s no part of thisthat we’re not we’re not trying we’renot trying to we’re wewe think we have faith in very much inwhat joel saidin that that if we can be if we can getthe human condition rightand um we can tell fun scaryexciting stories that bring you on ajourney withflawed interesting um aspirationalcharacterswho mess up sometimes and succeedsometimes umthat we think people will will turn outand and andyou know we’re we’re happy andconsider ourselves very lucky that umthat turns out that wewe might be right john youyou’ve you’ve probably seen change inthis over the yearsyeah but i think it’s so important whatwhen and what jill and what samada saidis thateven when you’re diversifying theserooms you can’t just have one person itthe weight of one personrepresenting a community because again ican sharemy experience being a black americangrowing up inwashington dc which may be verydifferent than a black american growingup in jerome idahobut that’s their story and so it’s notjust this what is this one black storyand going back to crazy rich asianswhich i’ve seen 14 times which is one ofmy top five filmswhen um tara potts who’s the svp ofmulticultural marketing good friend forwarner brotherswhen she was like john i need you to doa screening of it in washingtonthat august and we had 250 people andshe said you know invite all of yourasian american pacific islander partnersbut don’t just invite thembring your whole network of civil rightsand multicultural groups so we had like250.the non-asian community folks that sawlike oh my god this is not what ithought it would beabsolutely love this movie and then theywent all on social it just resonated itis whatwill packer said when he released aphotograph earlier this year it’s not ablack film it’s a love storywith black leagues and that is thedifference and so now we have to now getto these criticsand they have to diversify because soyou know as i was growingthey would easily tag something withblack leaves that’s urbanand if you are in rural america ormiddle americayou see urban you’re thinking oh it justdoesn’t it doesn’t connect with me whenand most times it didyou know so even in we’ve seen so manywhite led projects that we could allidentify but like i love yellowstone inthe paramount networkum i love the the um inclusion on thatcast butwe’ve seen so many so now it’s it’simportant that we showcasesimilar stories with leads frommulticultural and marginalizedbackground but it’s a shared story sothat’s whyhaving more than just one to be in itbecause it’s ait’s an awful thing to have one personcarry the weight if you’re in the roomof20 and you’re the only one carrying theweight of depending on what group yourepresentmillions of folks in their ideas andtheir thoughts and as one said we’re notwe’re not a monolith so that’s importantand that’s what themessaging is now getting across andthat’s what i’m happy aboutand people are getting it so i’ve goti’ve got a couple more questions oh yeahsimona go ahead i was just going to sayjust tobuild on what you were saying john isthat like we can’t umobviously put the onus on you know theone person in the room and it’s why it’sso important that we have to have peoplebut we also have to likelook into the their experience and andtheir actual background becauseone of the things i always joke aroundabout is that like at the end of the dayi’m american i have immigrant parentsi might identify as indian but i trulyuhidentify as a hick from kentucky at theend of the day like that’s how i grew upi have such a weird background and ithat’s the thing i ialways kind of ask like our show runnersand our executives and as we’re likekind of just talking to people just likethere’sa much more if you if you just dig alittle bit deeper and you reallyunderstand someone’s background theymight offer somethinga whole other perspective to the roomand so it’s that all the more importantto have those conversations and reallyunderstand the perspective you’regettingand not kind of be like oh i i got ablack person in my room like i justthat is the one thing that i i hope thatat the end of the dayas we’re moving forward that we can allthink of things a little moreholisticallyoh uh we’re gonna uh i just want toremind everybody uh toplease we’re gonna go to your questionsum shortly just remind her to click onthe q a buttonat the bottom drop your questions inwe’ve already got some questionsif you’re comfortable doing so please uhstate your nameand your affiliation uh it’s just alwayshelpfulum but jill i want to come back to youand just ask you about your workyou know we’ve talked about um what youwere doing at ohm but i want to ask youabout your work atsnap and how your uh approachingthat program at programming it’sobviously a very different animal thanyou know long-form television that youwere doing prior to thisabsolutely it’s a completely differentchallenge i had never worked for a techcompany before you knowi had probably you know had too manydebates with my daughter last summer whowas about to turn 13 about whether ornot she would even be allowed to havesnapchatbut once i realized that they have 238million users around the worldand realized that all of her friendswere on snapchatand that they had original content ialmost felt like it was this iron walland i had to get behind iti had to find out what they were doingand how they were doing it andi was excited to find that they haveboth scripted and unscriptedand you know what i learned from with mswinfrey as i said wasit’s all about intentionality so i gothere in the mindsetof an adult a grown-up in the room aparent who has a child who is the targetaudienceand knowing that a lot of the youngpeople who are on snap who are watchingthese programmingsmay or these programs may not see theworld beyond their phonefor a very long time they may not beable to travel they may not be able toleave theirtown let alone their state let alone thecountry so our question is alwayshow do we promote empathy how do we tellstories that show themother characters from diversebackgrounds how do wedo that in a way that’s character drivenso they get into their minds into theirheads into their heartsyou know traditionally that would bethrough great literature you would reada bookyou would be in their head you wouldunderstand what was going on in theirlives thankfully with unscriptedwe can use confessionals we can useinterviews we can use voiceoverand we do that with a lot of our contentbut so for meyou know i got there and they werealready producing shows like endlessthat had a diverse cast they werealready producing while black with mkasantewhich talked about what was like to beyoung and gifted and african-americangrowing upwe’re continuing to produce those showsas well as others and we’re constantlysaying how do we diversifythe talent on screen how do we make surethat we have the most diversecrews behind the scenes and how do weincrease the number of partnerships wehave with production companiesacross the industry and across the worldto make sure that whether we’re makingshows here at home or making showsabroad they reflect the storiesof the people who are telling thosestoriesyeah you know we’ve got a veryinteresting um question that’s come infrom the from the audience that gets ita little bit of what you’retouching it’s directed at you john thisis from chloe barnes who’s the lead forcuration standardsrepresentation and inclusion at twitterworking at twitter the company notsaying this on twitter she asks what arethe types of diversity metrics thatstudios need to hitonce projects are greenlit in order tobe considered diversewhich parties determine what the rightquote unquote right number of criteriastandards policiesuh for a project to be considered haveto have diverse representation how arewe definingdiverse i guess to to put the questionanother way yeah those areinternal and each studio has their ownum obviously they don’t share those withthe mpa because we are notin the creative space so they each havethose i know what um christie harbingerwho is at warner media and works withsamadashe is aggressively pushing them to dotheir own studies and even to releasethem i think nbc universal is doing thesame soi can’t specifically speak to eachstudio and what those numbersare but i know that all of them havemade thisa priority and have given mandates onhow they want to do this because againalthough the parents companies arelooking at this as wellevery single one of the parent companiesif you look atfive of them have all diversity incbeen the top employers so again can’tlook at those numbers i haven’t seenthembut they’re starting now to release themand i think that’s a good thingyeah i think the question more broadlyif i can just interpret it a little bitisyou know how do we get out of sort ofyou know box checkingum when it comes to you know diversityin all aspects of productions and ii’m happy for anybody to address thatsamaday you probably have uniqueexperience on thati’ve definitely um what’s interesting isthat likewe got to change the boxes right one ofmy biggestuh i you know for lack of one of mybiggest beasts is thatwhen you look at those boxes sometimesi’m having to identify in one box andthere’s not even like a place where youcancheck multiple boxes it’s like how do wecontinue to move the conversationbeyond the census in a lot of ways andwe are thinking about it fromsocioeconomics we’re thinking about itfrom every single dimension you canpossibly think about it and then workbackwards from that to meit’s disabilities and like how do welook at autism how do we look ateverything we can possibly represent onscreen and tell the stories ofeveryone out there as we even look atone character or an entire series ora movie how do we bring those stories tothe screen and the most compellingstories andum i think that’s really what we reallyhave to kind of reconsider and look atit’s not about color it’s abouteverything we really just have tolike look at all the dimensions ofdiversitywell it’s interesting because anotheranother one of our uh ourmembers of the audience right now who isuh choosing to remain anonymousasks a very good related question whichis can you addressother forms of diversity can you addresscan the panelists and maybe someone wecanstart with you because you touched onthis and then bring in some of the otherspeakers addressgeographic diversity relatable storiesthat could help us bring the countrytogether and bridgecultural differences from metro andnon-metro areas this of courseas we all know is particularly acuteproblemum at the moment you know um what is ityou know what does it look like to youto be samaosama you’re from eastern kentucky oryou know or fromother areas and how do we represent thaton screeni think it’s as simple as that it’s liketelling the story ofthose immigrants that are living inruralrural like parts of the country it’sunderstanding that socioeconomics andi’ll build again on what john saidis that like seeing a show likeyellowstonewhere you get to unders like in i thinkit’s episode twoseason two they have that incrediblescene where they actually talk aboutcolumbus day which was just yesterdayand i think that it’s just so poignantand it’s itagain it takes you gives you a moment ofhistorywhile also putting you in a place whereno one’s ever really seen a show it’s amodern day cowboys and indiansfor lack of a better way of describingit but it’s really good and i think thatthat’s showing you againwhat that’s right here in this countrybut is so foreign to so many people andi think those are thosethose are great stories to tell and i’mexcited about a lot of the things thatwe have coming up some of which i cannottell you about but there arepeople are so full of secrets but buti’ll just go back to things thateverybody does know about is like whenyou see something like it in the heightscoming out like and even we have uh thefred hampton movie thatit’s coming out um and i’m and we have auh the messiah uh oh my gosh this isterriblei should know the full new title of itbut anyway it’s the fred hampton movieand like you see that you’reyou’re showing a different time in adifferent place andand how it’s probably evolved and andbeing able to see that i think is anincredible thingwhen i want to ask you too about thisquestion aboutyou know in this in this here we areweeks awayfrom the election with a country that’sbeing ripped apart which is a subjectfor many other panels and we don’t needto get into that too deeply right nowbut you know this this issue ofrepresentingyou know other forms of diversity thatwe have in america and understandingeach other better i mean you and i bothcome from journalism and we know they’resort ofpeople look derisively appropriately soat this sort of likeyou know toe touch journalism where youknow somebody will come in from thewest coast or the east coast you know tohave a byline in the middle of thecountry andyou know the proverbial you know let’sgo to the diner and interview people inthe diner and it tends to benot very rich and authentic storytellingso how do youhow do you think about that in in yourworki think it’s i think it’s um i thinkit’s a it’s important touh you know not to keep coming back toit but i do think that the key here isalways going to be in specificityand it’s very easy for me as a coastalyou knowliberal to you know to to to painthuge swaths of this country in insort of a to put to put their populacein a bucket right and say okay that’severyone’s like thatand um and i think that that umi my theory and and maybe this is whereit is a little different from journalismalthough i suspect not is that when wewhen we use a broad brush umit becomes a lamer storyit becomes a and so i so so for us youknow there are a lot of peoplenow we’re saying i mean i think there isa certain you know because we’ve got somany differentoutlets for creators through youtube andplatforms like snap and forpl and tick tock even for people to beable to reach out who don’taren’t don’t enjoy the privilege ofbeing on in one of thesetwo or three cities and have an agentand a rep thatnow we’re beginning to see and we’rewe’re getting submissions fromkentuckians you know um we’re gettingstuff that’s coming in or people who arejust like a point of view that justdoesn’t fit the sort of the comfortablenarratives that we’re sort of used to umuh to telling our pat’s stories withand and by the way you know i think in abroader sensethis this conversation should never becomfortable we should never this thisthere’s no version of this panelthat should ever be the end of theconversation you know there’s no there’snot a place where we’re likewell we solved it we’ve created theright but we’ve created the right boxesand now we’ve checked them all and nowwe all get how to feel covered becauseby the way whenever we do thatwhenever we make everyone feelcomfortable really what you’re talkingaboutis you’re talking about making the umuh entrenched power holdersin many cases in america that’scertainly a tradition ofuh white supremacy and white malesupremacy making them comfortableand so for me i’m kind of like you knowlook if if wefeel like we’ve solved it geographicallyracially ethnicallyum then we are um we’vewe’ve failed um and so that’s sort of abigger sort ofi don’t know if it exactly answers yourquestion but i guess i think thatthese kind of conversations are are keyand that they’re going to keep changingand by the way the demographic truthpoints to that as well as you guysmentionedit’s like it’s the story is going tokeep changing and and um it’s ourresponsibility as asas uh artists and i ii think of as journalists also to be umdepicting that story in anaccurate and empathetic way really wellsaid john i had something you wanted toadd on to this and then jillno uh when is my hero with thatstatementyou know i always joke in the deni spaceat every studiowe all want to work ourselves outourselves sorryout of a job but we’re going to beworking for a while which isgoing to be interesting but again youknow we have to keep talking about thiseven when if we reach where we think weare therewe have to keep talking about because wecan’t go backwards and one i always talkabout this umthis coalition of folks that will holdour studios accountableand the networks and the streamers andthat social media if a project is notrepresentativepeople will not go see it and they willtalk about it and it will notmake money at the end of the day all ofthese companies arebusinesses and i wanted to addresssomething that you said really early onaboutthe lack of diversity at the executiveranks of our studioswe have seen that at the evp and abovethere is not the diversity that needs tobebut what i can say firsthand is that atevery one of our studio at that vpn svplevelit is bursting with diversity and ithink when the next three to five yearswhen we do theseclass photos what do these studios looklike who’s running themyou’re going to see a lot of black andbrown and women in representativemarginalized communitiesflooding these pictures because againthe industry has tochange with the times and the times arequickly changing because theyfor a few years it’ll be the brownmajority the black and brown majority sowe have to adjust phil i’m going to callon you in a second but i just want tomention one of ourmembers of our audience actually justtouched on a question that uhhe had this was a given credit antoinewallace who’swith the national innovation service wasasking about how do we address thatdisproportionate representation in thec-suite it’s almost likeyou know the you know that therevolution start you know started on theground and is moving you know it’smoving its wayup um but uh jill i don’t know if youwanted to comment on that or you werecommenting on the previous point but goaheadyeah i was actually commenting on theprevious point but to the seasonyou know it’s a conversation we’reactively having in the industry and weneed towork on getting more and more peopleinto the pipeline because unless we’reencouraging people who are in highschool to think about these jobsunless we’re giving internships that aremultiple year internships that reallylead to actual employment to people incollegewe’re not going to have the people tohire into the c-suite so that’s abig topic of conversation like i saidand i was just going to say back to thedifferent kinds of diversity i’m on thesame page i love everything all of youhave said i love that question that theaudience member askedyou know when we think of diversity wethink of you know what do we learn aboutwhen we’re in our hr trainings aboutdiversity equity and inclusion it’s notjust about race it’s about gender it’sabout sexuality it’s about religionit’s about class it’s about ability it’sabout all of these different kinds ofthingsand you know it was interesting they hada panel at the academy of televisionarts and sciences which gives out theemmy award not the oscarsbut they had it a few months ago andthey were talking about the fact thatyou know in the 70s there were so manystories about people of differenteconomic levelsand it’s hard to find them now and it’shard to get a green light for them nowbecause people say oh but it’s toodepressing totell a story about poor people and itwas like what is thatlike who are we to say whose stories aredepressing or upliftingwho are we to say whose stories areaspirational or noti think you know this is back to thathuman condition point butyou know our goal is to try to findstories that are immersive in all thosecategoriesand that is what i think is so excitingabout unscripted televisionis that we focus on character-drivendocu-series you know we’re doing oneright now about a black cowboy you knowwe’re doing one about a high schoolin the middle of the country telling allof their diverse stories so i think ourchallenge has to be tolook at all the best stories we can findif we’re not finding them in certainareas to digharder um and not shy away from thingsthat you knowto win’s point might make us feeluncomfortable because we might fall inlove with those stories they may be ourvery favorite because they remind us whowe areyeah there’s a question that comes fromrelated to what you’re talking aboutum from from the audience this is fromumand i’m sorry i hope you’re i’mpronouncing your name right uh makundasastryformer netflix content who was formerlya netflix content acquisitionand now a berkeley mba student okay sosomebody for that c-suite position uhthat we’re talking aboutso uh makunda asks how do we balancethese nuancedtargeted stories of what you’re alltalking about or or when with yourspecificity which i lovewith performance oftentimes i’m justreading a question oftentimes theseincreasinglytargeted shows and films don’t performas strongly at the box officeor on streaming platforms sometimes ifeel like we have so much to prove tomajority groupsin the industry for these unique storiesit’s interesting uh it it it’s aninteresting point like what doeshow do you think about what breaksthrough when go ahead looks like youhave somethingno i mean it’s a great it’s a greatquestion i don’t i i guessi would not take the premise necessarilyas truein part b and i don’t know like this i’mmaybe somebody’s more of an expert onthis than i am but i i guessby my lights most things stinkand flop right like most shows and filmslike at an incredible volume right imean there’sso much television and so many moviesand most of them are terribleand no one watches them and lots ofpeople lose money right i meanso i just i want to just be careful imean i just want to be i just want tomake sure that it’s true that there issomething aboutthose particular stories that bomb nothey’re gonna bomblike a lot of them are but um you knowmovies and tv shows bombuh in general so i would hate for thati think to be the lesson i guess uhit’s certainly not the lesson i’m i’mi’m taking but umi don’t know i i would throw it to my mycolleaguesa lot of terrible terrible movies thatare huge hits but that’s a whole otherstoryalso true also nothingi mean i think it’s all relative rightlike at the end of the day i thinkhow are we appealing to feelings how arewe appealing to a lot ofdifferent things inside of the nuancestorytellingand i always look at it this way whichis like what are theother audiences that there is anintersectionality with right like andi’ll go back totalking about oh you know what iactually think this is a better examplesomeone actuallycame to me and was talking about ummovies and specificallyum under the moniker of black movies andthey mentioned waiting to exhale and isaidno that is not a black moviein its own right that is a fantasticmovie and it’s about female empowermentand yes the incredible weeds happen tobe blackbut it is a movie that is an incrediblemovieand to again i think oftentimes and thisis going back to when we’re talkingabout marketing which someone made agreat point about marketingis that it’s about how you marketsomething too right andto me that is just an incredible storyof female empowerment at the end of thedaynot necessarily a black movie that youonly have to cater towards ablack audience to make it a huge successso i think when we talk about thatnuance storytelling anddifferent things like that it’s lookingat how you hit differentparts of the audience yeah john i thinkyou had something you wanted to addno i just i absolutely agree about nexthell i was like it was no different thanlike the first wives club or the jointhe club i meanum they were just marketing as women inpower movies sowhy is this the black woman in powermove no it’s justwomen empowerment again the lease whichis black and that’s what we have to doa better job of then yeah so i’m justagreeingoh i feel like crazy rich asians to mewas about like incredible houses that iwill never be able to live in that’sreally what it was aboutthis is this is uh we are sadly out oftime there are many more questions i’mso sorryuh to the audience thank you for beingwith us that we didn’t get a chanceto get to um i i just want to thank theuh all our panelists for your greatinsightsand your uh nuanced um comments and yourspecificityon on all of the points um it’s you knowit’sit’s wonderful to see that they’re suchuh impassionedum people across all aspects of themovie industry we’re going to be seeinguh we’re seeing such great progress andyet more to go

In this “Golden Age” of television, the writers, producers, and directors behind our shows, and the actors that dominate our screens, are almost entirely white. Despite earnest attempts by content creators in Hollywood and elsewhere to reflect our nation’s diversity, the industry remains woefully imbalanced. As the third part of our ongoing series, this program explores how U.S. entertainment companies are revisiting their traditional models to meet the moment and help diversify this generation of stories and storytellers.

Speakers

• Jill Dickerson, Head of Unscripted Originals, Snap, Inc.
• John Gibson, Vice President, External and Multicultural Affairs, Motion Pictures Association
• Samata Narra, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Inclusion, WarnerMedia
• Win Rosenfeld, President, Monkeypaw
• Vivian Schiller, Executive Director, Aspen Digital

Jill Dickerson

Head of Unscripted Originals, Snap, Inc.

Jill Dickerson serves as Head of Unscripted Originals for Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat. As a senior member of the Snap Originals team, Jill leads the development of their docuseries and unscripted efforts from Snap’s Santa Monica headquarters. She most recently served as SVP, Programming & Development at OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, where she had been since 2009.Previously Jill served as series producer for TLC’s “Miami Ink,” supervising producer for the hit VH-1 series “My Fair Brady,” supervising story producer for the premiere seasons of ABC series “The Bachelorette,” “The Mole,” and “Making the Band,” and senior story editor for CBS’ “Big Brother.”  She got her start as a story editor on MTV’s “The Real World: Hawaii.” Jill holds an MFA in Culture & Media from New York University and a bachelor’s degree in Social Anthropology from Harvard & Radcliffe Colleges.  She is a current Governor for the Reality Peer Group of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and lives in Sherman Oaks with her husband and 13 year old daughter.

John Gibson

Vice President, External and Multicultural Affairs, Motion Pictures Association

John Gibson is one of the leading diversity, equity, and inclusion change agents in the country. In 2012, he established the Motion Picture Association’s DE&I program – working simultaneously to promote and highlight the association and its member studios’ multicultural initiatives, while also managing the MPA’s partnerships with national civil rights and multicultural groups as part of the association’s outreach to leading third party organizations.  Prior to his work at the MPA, John advised the chief executives of an international private real estate investment management firm and two high-profile international corporate law firms. Earlier in his career, Gibson was a Clinton Administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Agriculture where he advised then-Secretary Dan Glickman on executive operations, employee relations and civil rights outreach while simultaneously serving on the USDA/1890s Task Force – the department’s partnership with the “land grant” Historically Black Colleges and Universities.  He previously also worked as a Legislative Aide for U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA).

Samata Narra

Senior Vice President, Enterprise Inclusion, WarnerMedia

Samata Narra is senior vice president of Enterprise Inclusion, content strategy for WarnerMedia. She is responsible for building innovative tools and global systems across the company to help facilitate the advancement of equity and inclusion in our storytelling. Prior to joining WarnerMedia, she was senior vice President of Comedy Development and Current Programming for FOX where she developed and oversaw live action and animated comedy series including: The Last Man on Earth, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, New Girl, Bob’s Burgers, and the Mindy Project.  She serves as President of the Board of Film2Future, a non-profit providing equitable access to the entertainment industry for underrepresented LA youth.). Samata is a native of Pikeville, Kentucky and earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Management and Marketing from the Boston University School of Management.

Win Rosenfeld

President, Monkeypaw

Win Rosenfeld is a writer-producer and President of Monkeypaw Productions. He oversees the company’s diverse slate of film and television productions, and is Executive Producer of The Twilight Zone and Hunters. Win is a producer on Monkeypaw’s upcoming feature film, Candyman, for which he also co-wrote the screenplay along with Jordan Peele and the film’s director, Nia DaCosta. Prior to joining the company, Win produced digital, social and broadcast content for various outlets including NBC, Slate and NPR, and edited an Emmy Award-winning segment at PBS.

Vivian Schiller

Executive Director, Aspen Digital

Vivian Schiller is the Executive Director of Aspen Digital. A longtime executive at the intersection of journalism, media and technology, Schiller has held executive roles at some of the most respected media organizations in the world. Those include: President and CEO of NPR; Global Chair of News at Twitter; General Manager of NYTimes.com; Chief Digital Officer of NBC News; Chief of the Discovery Times Channel, a joint venture of The New York Times and Discovery Communications; and Head of CNN documentary and long form divisions. Documentaries and series produced under her auspices earned multiple honors, including three Peabody Awards, four Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Awards, and dozens of Emmys. Schiller is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; and a Director of the Scott Trust, which owns The Guardian.