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  • every black artist I've ever worked with his mentor, me in some way, shape or form.

  • The biggest matter, I could point out is my father, who not only raised a generation of young black man from his work in his heart, but when he wasn't busy doing that, he was busy imparting into me what it means to be a black man in America.

  • And this is Michelle Obama.

  • She supported my music and just me as a person and brought me along on the Let Girls Learn campaign.

  • And I just got to see the power and the strength of a black woman going in making waves of change.

  • A woman named Victoria Alexander.

  • She put out a book list for people who wanted to learn about anti racism, people who just wanted to like, Hey, if you have white friends or non black friends and they're looking for books or answers, she's been doing incredible work as an activist.

  • The work of S Array is just so authentic and unapologetic.

  • She just gives permission for us to be ourselves and celebrate life just normalizing the millennial, awkward ass black experience.

  • A book by Angela Davis called Women race and class.

  • She does such a thorough job at walking you through the history of black women specifically in American.

  • How much they've contributed to society has really inspired me In this industry, working with him or routing American saga has been exceptional.

  • Tim Anderson and Sharing Couch There are two individuals from my childhood that really invested in me a positive black male role model.

  • Positive black woman role models.

  • They instilled in me hard work.

  • They always told me they believed in me, and I have carried that on through adulthood in my career.

  • My brother Luti Fag Ben Lee has a production company called Lutein Media, and it's a black production company.

  • And they made a show called Max.

  • You can watch it Now in Honolulu.

  • He was an example of diversifying in front and behind the camera.

  • Definitely my mom, my mother, my aunt and my grandmother.

  • My mother runs her own business.

  • My father went from being a gas meter reader in Seattle to an executive here in New York City.

  • I think we're in a really interesting place where the idea of mentorship and elevating our voices is no longer traditional.

  • I feel like we're doing that for each other actively on an equal playing.

  • I think this was so beautiful about it is you're seeing filmmakers who are brand new mentoring studio execs on how to tell stories.

  • Everyone knows about Rosa Parks, but what about Claudette Colvin?

  • Everyone knows about Martha King, but a lot of people know a lot about John Lewis or the fact that one in every four cowboys is actually black.

  • Black people can go to space.

  • Yeah, black people can fight dragons.

  • Why do they always got to be slaves?

  • For some reason, it doesn't make sense.

  • More black fantasy, more black superheroes.

  • I want to see stories of love, of connection of family.

  • I want trans black stories.

  • I want gay black stories.

  • I want more black women stories.

  • Let's focus on sharing more stories about black education, the ones that showcase the range of our humanity.

  • That's the ups and downs of highs and the lows.

  • And we'll get authenticity.

  • The more that we get as many different people with in positions of power within this industry as we possibly can, and the people behind the camera people, right in the stories that people directing stories that people producing the stories we're in this together every month is Black History Month.

  • Look out for your brothers and sisters.

  • Yeah.

every black artist I've ever worked with his mentor, me in some way, shape or form.

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