Reality Programming Governors Bob Boden and Jill Dickerson, along with their Peer Group Executive Committee, invite members to:
Inclusive Storytelling in Reality Television
This panel will feature a discussion with both seasoned reality producers and diversity, equity and inclusion professionals about the ways in which networks and production companies can work to bring more inclusive storytelling into reality television.
Panelists*:
Bree Frank, Founder, HUE You Know and VP, Physical Production - Unscripted, Hello Sunshine
Catrice Monson, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Right Size Media
Christian Sarabia, President, 51 Minds
Elizabeth Grizzle Voorhees, Chief Strategy Officer, Define American
Jamal Henderson, Chief Content Officer at The SpringHill Company
Jonathan Murray, Founder & Executive Consultant, Bunim-Murray Productions
Philip Byron, Head of Unscripted and Documentaries, The SpringHill Company
Shannon Keenan Demers, Executive Vice President of Production & Creative, Tremendous! Entertainment
Moderated by:
Daymond John, Founder and CEO of FUBU
*subject to change
Academy Members: Click here to RSVP.
Foundation Alumni: Click here to RSVP.
Reminder: Peer group events like this one accept registrations on a first-come, first-served basis. If the event reaches capacity, members who register will be placed on the Waiting List. As space opens up, members on the Waiting List may be promoted to a registration up to 24 hours before the event. For more information, check Frequently Asked Questions.
Can't make the event? No problem! This event will be recorded and you can watch on TelevisionAcademy.com the week following the event.
PANELISTS
Bree Frank
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 nearly 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. Recently, Bree has transitioned to Hello Sunshine (Reese Witherspoon's media company), as their Vice President of Physical Production for Unscripted. Bree is thrilled to work at a women-led company with a clear mission to tell exceptional stories and move the television zeitgeist forward.
Bree's ultimate goal is to lift the voices of BIPOC professionals through equity, inclusion, and belonging in the world of media and beyond.
Catrice Monson
Catrice Monson is a people-first leader and lifelong advocate. Her creative spirit inspires her to experiment with roles, projects, and challenges to reach innovative solutions and ways of working. Marrying traditional D&I initiatives and change-management strategies, Catrice is an expert at imagining, designing, and building fresh work environments where employees are empowered and encouraged to share their unique and broad perspectives.
In 2020, Catrice co-founded Right Size Media, a company focused on helping organizations to make the creative process more inclusive, versatile and safe. Right Size Media has clients across the Media, Entertainment, Technology, and Telecommunications industries.
Prior to founding Right Size Media, she was Senior Vice President, Diversity and Inclusion at CBS Corporation where she facilitated engagement – internally and externally – on company-wide diversity and inclusion programs, spearheaded the west coast based components of the Corporation's multi-cultural and women's employee resource groups, and oversaw the CBS Corporation Diversity Council, expanding its impact through activities and outreach.
Prior to becoming SVP, she worked in the CBS Labor Relations Department from 2000-2016, most recently as Senior Vice President, Labor Relations. In that role, Catrice represented CBS in negotiations with various entertainment unions and guilds as well as the labor relations department in meetings with the guilds and unions on issues related to diversity and increasing access. When she was presented with the opportunity to pivot towards a career focused on amplifying diverse perspectives, she jumped at the role.
Her commitment to creating a more equitable world extends far beyond her role at CBS. Catrice is the Executive Director of CAM (Community Academics Mentoring) – a foundation that provides financial assistance for underserved students and she served on the Board of Trustees for the Archer School for Girls for 8 years. She is also an Adjunct Professor at UCLA Law specializing in navigating the guilds and unions of the entertainment industry, and sits on the board for the Ziffren Institute for Media, Entertainment, Technology and Sports Law.
Catrice completed her BA in American Studies from Stanford University before earning her J.D. from the UCLA School of Law.
Christian Sarabia
With over a decade of experience at every level of some of reality television’s most exciting original programs, Christian Sarabia has long been a driving creative force behind one of unscripted TV’s most original and audacious production companies, 51 Minds Entertainment. In 2014, Sarabia was named President of the studio, which is a subsidiary of Endemol Shine North America. 51 Minds now has some of the hottest unscripted shows on cable TV, several franchises spawning spin-off series and a slew of new shows coming to multiple networks/platforms in the months ahead.
51 Minds’ Below Deck, Below Deck: Mediterranean, and Below Deck: Sailing Yacht on Bravo are three of the fastest-growing reality programs on any platform and is behind two hit series with actor/rapper T.I., including T.I. & Tiny: Friends and Family Hustle on VH1 and The Grand Hustle on BET. 51 Minds is producing the upcoming series Marriage or Mortgage for Netflix, Cakealikes for Discovery+/Food Network, and Squeaky Clean for Quibi while having an additional 15+ projects in development with the Discovery family alone. 51 Minds has also done the original film Beats for Netflix with Global Road Entertainment and produced the popular series Truck Night in America on History.
Starting at the very bottom of a burgeoning medium, Sarabia paid his dues on the ground level of the “celebreality” explosion, assisting, coordinating, and finally producing a number of memorable VH1 hits that put reality on the map. After stints on The Surreal Life and Flavor of Love, Sarabia worked his way up as an assistant director, supervising producer and, finally, executive producer on such successful series as VH1’s For the Love of Ray J and CBS’ Same Name.
Solidifying his position as a seasoned showrunner, Sarabia shepherded future hits Marrying the Game and T.I. & Tiny: The Family Hustle from early development to landmark television mainstays. Having subsequently produced and sold hundreds of hours of reality programming to both cable and broadcast networks alike, Sarabia took the reins at reality mainstay 51 Minds seven years ago with an eye towards further groundbreaking programming.
Elizabeth Grizzle Voorhees
Elizabeth’s passion for harnessing the power of story to create positive social change has led her to her role at Define American, a media advocacy organization that uses the power of narrative to shift the conversation about immigrants, identity, and citizenship in a changing America. Elizabeth left her fifteen-year career as a television producer and showrunner for networks such as VH1, OWN, and Lifetime Television to design and implement long-term culture change strategies at Define American. She currently oversees all ongoing work within the entertainment industry, news media and digital media spaces for the organization and spends her time imagining new narratives that are inclusive, accurate, compelling and can change the hearts and minds of mass audiences. Elizabeth holds a B.A. in Communications from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a M.A. in Social Entrepreneurship from Pepperdine University.
Jamal Henderson
Jamal Henderson is the Chief Content Officer at The SpringHill Company. In his role, Henderson oversees the development and production of original content for television, film and audio. Since joining in 2015, Henderson has successfully led the charge in setting up films Space Jam: A New Legacy (Warner Bros.) and House Party (Newline), and producing Self Made (Madam CJ Walker limited series with Octavia Spencer) at Netflix, Shut Up and Dribble at Showtime, The Wall at NBC, and winning an EMMY for the Muhammad Ali limited docuseries, What's My Name for HBO, directed by Antoine Fuqua.
Prior to joining SpringHill, Henderson was a Brand Director at PepsiCo managing the Mountain Dew brand. He received his BS from Cornell and MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern.
Jonathan Murray
Widely credited with helping to usher in the modern reality television genre with his late partner Mary-Ellis Bunim, Jonathan Murray continues to inspire, influence and entertain television audiences worldwide. Since the launch of The Real World on MTV in 1992, Murray has created and executive produced some of the industry's most innovative, unscripted, entertainment television programs. Most recently he Executive Produced A&E's acclaimed series, Born This Way, about young adults with Down Syndrome and their families. The series won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Unstructured Reality Series.
Besides The Real World, which most recently streamed in the US, Mexico, and Thailand on Facebook Watch, Murray has executive produced: Family or Fiancé (OWN), Project Runway, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, The Simple Life, Road Rules, The Challenge, Starting Over (Emmy Award), and Making the Band, as well as the feature film The Real Cancun, the television movie Pedro, and the documentaries Autism: The Musical (HBO) (Emmy Award), Shadow Billionaire (CNBC), Valentine Road (HBO), They Call Us Monsters (PBS), as well as two documentaries for HBO released in 2020: Autism: The Sequel, and Transhood.
Jonathan Murray graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and currently lives in Los Angeles. Murray serves on the Board of Directors of The Television Academy Foundation, and on the Board of RespectAbility, an organization that advances opportunities for people with disabilities. In 2012, Murray was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.
Philip Byron
Philip Byron is the Head of Unscripted & Documentaries for The SpringHill Company where he oversees the entertainment company's robust slate of nonfiction content. Over the past four years, Phil has grown SpringHill's portfolio to include both global formats and groundbreaking docuseries for dozens of networks.
He is an Executive Producer on the following series that aired in 2020: The Shop (HBO), Becoming (Disney+), The Playbook (Netflix), I Promise (Quibi), Bear Witness, Take Action (YouTube Originals) and the broadcast special Graduate Together: America Honors the High School Class of 2020 that garnered over 25 million views.
Previously the Boston University graduate was a Creative Executive across digital and unscripted television at Whalerock Industries. He currently serves on the Emerging Leaders Board for the National MS Society.
Shannon Keenan Demers
Shannon Keenan Demers is the Executive Vice President of Production and Creative for Tremendous Entertainment, where she oversees multiple series for a wide variety of networks including TLC, A&E, Travel Channel, Food Network, Hallmark and OWN. Recent successes include the long running series Bizarre Foods for Travel, Lost In Transition for TLC, and Meet The Peete's for Hallmark.
She also has won two Emmys for her work as an Executive Producer for Rock The Park on ABC and Naturally Danny Seo on NBC.
Before joining Tremendous, Shannon spent several years at E! Entertainment working with Joan Rivers and Melissa Rivers, helping to craft what is now a very successful Red Carpet franchise. From there, she went on to produce a variety of reality shows including The Bachelor (After the Final Rose), Here Come the Newlyweds, High School Musical, and Get In The Picture for ABC, and Big Brother for CBS.
MODERATOR
Daymond John
Daymond John is the founder and CEO of FUBU, a celebrated global lifestyle brand with over $6 billion in sales. Starring in the Emmy Award-winning ABC series Shark Tank and author of New York Times bestsellers The Power of Broke and Rise and Grind, Daymond is among the country's most visible and respected entrepreneurs. Over the past 5 years, John has expanded his reach to include being a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship under the Obama Administration and re-affirming his commitment to financial intelligence by creating Daymond on Demand, a virtual interactive curriculum designed to teach both aspiring and seasoned entrepreneurs the ins and outs of small business leadership. Most recently, Daymond curated the first ever Black Entrepreneurs Day, a virtual event that took in over 7 million viewers featuring conversations with A-List celebrities, entertainers, athletes, and business icons. In doing so, Daymond was able to call upon his best network of blue chip brands to stand with him on this initiative highlighted by the event being presented by Chase for Business with supporting sponsorship coming from The General Insurance, Pepsi Co, UPS, Intuit/QuickBooks, Robinhood, and more.