The Top 100 People Of Color In Media: Part 9: 20-11
From creators to executives, from technicians to producers, the world of media and entertainment offers thousands of professions that cross and merge, giving the people that work in it the opportunity to fully discover how creative potential and business acumen often overlap. It is fascinating to study the careers of some of these people, thus understanding which opportunities they were able to seize and when did “the right moment” happen. This is why A Hot Set has compiled a list of “The Top 100 People of Color In Media”, a weekly series that for ten Mondays will explore a hundred of the most influential POCs in the entertainment industry. Below are numbers from 20 to 11, and you can find the previous article here. Stay tuned for next Monday’s list!
Nate Moore - Mondadori Portfolio
20. Nate Moore: As Vice President of Production and Development at Marvel Studios, Nate Moore is one of the pioneers of Marvel, a renowned producer with huge titles in his portfolio such as Captain America: Civil War (2016), Black Panther (2018), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). With a Bachelor’s in communication studies from UCLA, Moore was able to land a first internship at Columbia Pictures, which later brought him to take on a role as a production assistant on the set of Spider-Man 2 (2004). It was this credit on his resume that landed him an interview at Marvel: he joined the production division of the company in 2010, right after Marvel Studios had just been bought by Disney in December 2009 for $4 billion.
When asked about the social impact that Black Panther has had, Moore commented that, although it is now a global phenomenon, its social weight was unpredictable at the time: “There are stories to be told that people want, and will embrace if you give it to them, even if, traditionally, these are the kinds of stories that have been passed over.” He also highlighted how movies like Black Panther or Wonder Woman are commercial risks that can only be taken by well-established brands like Marvel, and that the subsequent financial success is what leads other studios to follow suit, thus instigating a real social change.
Shonda Rhimes - Cindy Ord
19. Shonda Rhimes: Shonda Rhimes is one of the most famous and important showrunners working in television today. The hit series that brought her to the spotlight and into stardom was Grey’s Anatomy, which first aired on March 27, 2005, on ABC as a mid-season replacement, and is still actively in production with its twentieth season. Other major successes are Scandal (2012-2018), How to Get Away with Murder (2014-2020), Private Practice (2007-2013), and Station 19 (2018-present), still airing on ABC. Now, a most definitive success has been the period drama series Bridgerton (2020-present) on Netflix, which is in production for a third season and has a spin-off limited series called Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (2023). The two Bridgerton seasons each broke various records at the time of their releases, and the spinoff has topped Netflix’s charts for weeks, even increasing its viewership during its second week from release. Both Bridgerton and Inventing Anna (2022) are part of a 2017 multi-year deal with Netflix, according to which all Rhimes’ productions will be Netflix Originals. The groundbreaking deal, valued at $450 million, was then extended in 2021 for another five years.
Rhimes’ production company Shondaland was founded in 2005 as one of the production companies behind Grey’s Anatomy and went on to be the production company behind every show written and produced by Rhimes. Before becoming the TV titan she is today, her first major writing job was as the screenwriter of The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004) after other writing credits in other movies, such as Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999).
Nicole Brown - Michael Tullberg - Stringer
18. Nicole Brown: Nicole Brown, now the President of Sony’s TriStar Pictures, grew up in Los Angeles and had a very early start in the industry as a child actor. Talking about what led to her seeking opportunities behind the camera instead of in front of it, she says that she “started to look at the people behind the camera and wonder, “What are they doing, and if I were on the other side, would I be able to create more opportunities for people who look like me?”. This is what led her to study history and film at Columbia University and intern at Miramax Studios. The first project she produced in LA was Honey (2003); Brown also helped develop the Broadway phenomenon Wicked. Later, she joined the film financing and production company Mandate Pictures (now known as Good Universe), where she worked on movies of the likes of Drew Barrymore’s Whip It (2009) and eventually became executive vice president.
In 2020 she was appointed President of TriStar Pictures, originally founded by Victor Kaufman in 1982 as Nova Pictures and now part of the Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group. Brown was already part of Sony Pictures from 2013, when Tom Rothman, Chairman of the Motion Picture Group, hired her to relaunch the label to be “culturally relevant” and with a “mission to empower dynamic storytellers”. Brown is a member of the board of Women in Film, as well as a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
Anjali Sud - Lars Niki / Stringer
17. Anjali Sud: Anjali Sud holds a bachelor’s from The Wharton School, as well as an MBA from Harvard Business School, with which she started her career as an Associate in the Mergers and Acquisitions division at Time Warner. She then continued her path working as Director of Marketing at Amazon, after which she landed at Vimeo in the same role in 2014. In 2017 she became Vimeo’s CEO, a position that she still holds to this day. When she was appointed as CEO, Vimeo was looking to change its strategy from investing in original content to becoming a creators’ platform, offering software and tools for video-makers. During her tenure, Sud has overseen some major acquisitions, such as that of Livestream in 2017 and the startups Wirewax and Wibbitz in 2019. Vimeo’s latest valuation in 2021 amounted to more than $5 billion when it raised $300 million in equity from T. Rowe Price Group.
Sud is a member of the Board of Directors of Dolby Laboratories and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. In 2017, she was listed in The Hollywood Reporter’s “Next Gen: 35 Under 35”. Fortune also gave her more than one honorary title, as she was included in Fortune’s “2018 40 Under 40,” as well as named one of India’s most powerful businesswomen in 2022.
Sam Yam - Stefanie Keenan
16. Sam Yam: Sam Yam is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Patreon, the hugely recognized network that finances creators and artists through fan membership. Yam co-founded AdWhirl, which was bought by Google in 2010 and worked as an entrepreneur in residence and mentor at StartX before joining Patreon. Yam is also a YCombinator YCE and has worked at Google, Yahoo, and Stanford's StartX. Yam earned a BS in computer science from Stanford. Yam and Jim Conte, Yam's undergraduate roommate and fellow musician, spotted the financial possibilities of connecting creators to their fans' wallets. After around a year of operation, the duo had helped their Patreon creators earn $1 million.
Patreon is a membership platform that gives content creators business tools to establish a subscription service. It enables innovators and artists to make monthly income by rewarding and enticing their users. Patreon is utilized by YouTube videographers, webcomic artists, writers, podcasters, musicians, and other online creators. As previously stated, Yam and Conte's objective for Patreon is to enable artists to earn recurring support directly from their followers, or patrons. Yam and Conte's company grew from humble beginnings as a start-up to generate money from their own YouTube videos to a San Francisco-based company with over three million subscribers.
Neeraj Khemlani - Eugene Gologursky / Stringer
15. Neeraj Khemlani: Neeraj Khemlani is a Singaporean-born Indian American serving as the co-president of CBS News and CBS Television Stations. Prior to joining CBS, Khemlani worked as an associate producer for ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings and co-produced items for Nightline and Good Morning America with Robert Krulwich. He began his career at CBS News as an associate producer for 60 Minutes II in 1998 and left eight years later as a producer for 60 Minutes. From 2006 to 2009, Khemlani was a senior executive at Yahoo! News before joining the Hearst Corporation as a vice president in 2009. Khemlani was named co-heads (along with Wendy McMahon) of CBS News and CBS TV Stations on April 15, 2021, succeeding Peter Dunn and Susan Zirinsky.
CBS News is the news division of the CBS television and radio network (currently owned by Paramount). Under Khemlani’s leadership, he oversees CBS’s television series such as CBS Evening News, CBS Mornings, news magazine programs CBS News Sunday Morning, 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, and Sunday morning political affairs show Face the Nation. He also oversees CBS News Radio and also supervises CBS News podcasts such as The Takeout Podcast and broadcast programming that airs hourly newscasts for hundreds of radio stations. Along with that, CBS News also has a digital news network available 24 hours a day, seven days a week overseen by Khemlani.
Kim Goodwin - Arturo Holmes
14. Kim Godwin: Kimberly Godwin is the President of ABC News, the first Black woman head of a major US broadcast news division. With a Bachelor’s in journalism from Florida A&M University, the first historically Black university to offer an accredited journalism degree, she joined ABC News in 1991 and became Vice President and News Director in 2001. She later joined CBS News, where she stayed for more than ten years, and finally became Executive Vice President. Her vast experience in this sector led to her taking her current role at ABC News in 2021, where she supervises both editorial and business operations on all news platforms: broadcast, digital, streaming, and audio.
Some of the series that Godwin oversees are ABC’s flagship programs such as Good Morning America, The View, World News Tonight, 20/20, and Nightline. During her career, Godwin has accumulated a number of prestigious awards, among which six National News and Documentary Emmy Awards, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, and an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia award. Godwin is also a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.
Rashida Jones - Dominik Bindl / Stringer
13. Rashida Jones: Rashida Jones succeeded Phil Griffin as president of the cable news network MSNBC on February 1, 2021. Jones is the first African American woman to run a cable news network. Jones served as a morning show producer at WTKR in Norfolk, Virginia, before joining MSNBC. She spent several years at The Weather Channel as a weekend producer before becoming head of live programming in 2009. Jones later worked as a news director at WIS-TV in Columbia, South Carolina, before moving to New York City to serve as an executive producer for daytime programming at MSNBC. Later positions included managing editor at MSNBC and senior vice president of specials for NBC News and MSNBC, where she oversaw dayside and weekend news programming on MSNBC and led coverage of breaking news and big events across NBC News and MSNBC.
Jones is credited with popularizing the town-hall format, including a criminal justice program shot inside the Sing Sing penitentiary facility. She oversaw a move away from wall-to-wall election coverage to a concentration on COVID-19 as a senior vice president at NBC News and MSNBC. Jones's work has received numerous honors: being inducted into the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications Hall of Fame, being named in Variety's 2020 New York Women's Impact Report, becoming the inaugural recipient of the Media Leadership Award from Montclair State University School of Communication and Media in 2022, receiving the Achievement of Excellence Award from Scripps Howard School of Journalism & Communications at Hampton University, and being named in Variety's 2020 “New York Women's Impact Report”.
Pearlena Igbokwe - Jon Kopaloff / Stringer
12. Pearlena Igbokwe: Pearlena Igbokwe was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and moved to the United States when she was a child after living through the Biafran War. With a BA in English from Yale and an MBA from Columbia Business School, Igbokwe is at the perfect intersection between humanistic and business studies, which led to one of her first jobs: Marketing Manager at Showtime Networks. Thirteen years later, Igbokwe became Senior Vice President of Original Programming, overseeing both new and existing content to be broadcast on the cable network. In 2012 she joined NBCUniversal, where now she leads Universal Television, Universal Content Productions (UCP), Universal Television Alternative Studios, and Universal International Studio as Chairman of the Universal Studio Group.
Under her leadership, Universal Television developed popular shows such as Russian Doll (2019-present), The Good Place (2016-2020), New Amsterdam (2018-2023), and Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013-2021). She is also part of the Board of Directors of the Hollywood Radio and TV Society, the Television Academy Executive Committee, and the National Association of TV Programming Executives. Igbokwe is the first Black woman to head a major US studio.
Pearlena Igbokwe - Jon Kopaloff / Stringer
11. Neal Mohan: On February 16, 2023, Indian American Neal Mohan took over as CEO of Google-owned YouTube, succeeding Susan Wojcicki. Mohan started his career at Accenture in 1996 as a senior analyst. Andersen Consulting was the company's name at the time. He later worked for NetGravity, which was acquired by DoubleClick in 2002. As a result, Mohan joined DoubleClick and relocated from California to New York. In 2003, he departed as the vice president of Business Operations after assisting the company's technology sales and services group. Mohan subsequently concentrated on finishing his MBA and working at Microsoft. When DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt persuaded him to return to the company, Mohan agreed to work from California in 2005. DoubleClick was purchased by an equity firm by that point. As a result, Mohan was promoted to senior vice president (SVP) of Strategy and Product Management at DoubleClick. In that capacity, he collaborated with Rosenblatt to develop a strategy to restructure DoubleClick's business.
It performed so effectively that Google bought DoubleClick in April 2007 for approximately $3.1 billion. Mohan began working with Wojcicki after the acquisition and was promoted to SVP of display and video ads at Google in March 2008. He oversaw advertising on YouTube, the Google Display Network, AdSense, AdMob, and the DoubleClick family of programmatic ad platform products. Mohan's program altered how website owners get revenue from Google ads based on impressions and clicks. When Wojcicki took over as CEO of YouTube in 2014, she hired Mohan as her second-in-command and chief product officer (CPO). Outside Google, Mohan has assumed other roles like serving on the board of MMA Global and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), being a member of the Management Board at his business school from 2013 to 2017, is on the boards of biotech company 23andMe and online personal styling service Stitch Fix and is also a member of the Council of Foreign Relations.