The Top 100 People Of Color in Media: Part 2: 90-81
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 90 to 81, and you can find the first ten here. Stay tuned for next Monday’s article!
Latoya Peterson and Dr. Mitu Khandaker - Glow Up Games
90. Dr. Mitu Khandaker and Latoya Peterson (Co-Founders): Dr. Mitu Khandaker is a seasoned game designer, programmer, and entrepreneur. She has worked on the acclaimed systemic narrative indie game Redshirt and was part of the founding team at game AI tools company Spirit AI. Throughout her career, Dr. Khandaker has been a vocal advocate for thoughtful games, tech, and stories concerning race, gender, and identity. She holds a Ph.D. in game interactivity and is on the faculty at NYU Game Center. Latoya Peterson is a veteran in the television industry specializing in emerging technology. Peterson is an award-winning race and culture writer for major outlets like the New York Times, NPR, Jezebel, and Kotaku, as well as a three-time judge for the World Video Game Hall of Fame.
Glow Up Games is a creative R&D studio specializing in interactive entertainment. They produce stories through games, mobile, AI, AR/VR, and other emerging technologies. Founders Dr. Mitu Khandaker and Latoya Peterson are women of color who have spent the last decade shaping entertainment through innovative applications of technology and distinctive storytelling. The company’s goal is to advance the industry by centering underrepresented majorities and leveraging new technologies to craft more powerful and playful experiences. Dr. Khandaker, Peterson, and everyone at Glow Up Games believes in empowering the narrative of voices outside the mainstream.
Khalil and Ahmed Abdullah - Micah Joel Photography
89. Khalil and Ahmed Abdullah (Co-Founders): The two brothers Khalil and Ahmed Abdullah founded Decoy Games shortly after college, completely self-taught and self-funded. In a March 2023 interview with “Work With Indies”, they recall how their parents would not let them play games during the school year, which pushed them to create their own games to play. And it paid off, as now Decoy Games has been awarded various accolades for its debut game Swimsanity!, a multiplayer underwater shooter with competitive versus and co-op game modes that is available on multiple gaming platforms.
The Abdullah brothers aim at creating an environment of inclusivity and freedom of creative expression, both in the workspace and reflected in their games. In 2020 they presented “Game On – Celebrating Black Excellence in Gaming” at the Flagship Microsoft Store in New York City, an evening dedicated to the celebration of Black involvement in the gaming industry, which included a panel of discussion, networking events, and performances. Moreover, Decoy Games partnered with Yellowbrick - an e-learning provider that offers accredited online courses by partnering with brands and universities - to sponsor a scholarship for the Fashion Institute of Technology.
James Makawa - African Artists' Association
88. James Makawa: James Makawa is the founder of The Africa Channel, a TV network that offers more than 1600 hours of content from the African continent to be shown in the US for the first-time. Their mission is to “open up a daily window into modern African life and, in the process, help demystify Africa for American viewers.” In fact, the programs are mainly about urban Africa, an aspect of the continent that has seldom been shown to western audiences.
Native of Zimbabwe, James Makawa studied broadcast journalism in Indiana. After spending some years working in journalism in the US, in 1995 he decided to go back to Africa and start African Barter Company (ABC), the first barter syndication company ever launched in Africa with the intention to bring western programming into African households. To make it happen, he had to overcome two obstacles: the poor quality of the signal and the high costs of the content (as it was often priced in USD). Thus, Makawa partnered with many global producers such as CBS and Paramount, striking deals to get airtime in exchange for additional content. It was thanks to this experience that, when he moved to Los Angeles in 2001, he understood the necessity for the opposite service as well: bringing African content to the US. This is what led him to found The Africa Channel in 2002, where he acted as CEO until 2009.
Keke Palmer - Araya Doheny / Stringer
87. Keke Palmer: Keke Palmer is the stage name of Lauren Palmer, an American actress, singer, writer, director, and TV personality, awarded by TIME as one of the most influential people in the world in 2019. She recently starred in Jordan Peele’s Nope (2022), Disney’s Lightyear (2022), and Alice (2022).
In 2022, Keke Palmer launched Key TV, a streaming television network led by her where she gives the opportunity to minor, up-and-coming creative voices to have access to the entertainment industry. In her words: “All it takes is one of us to unlock a door to unlock a million doors for each other”. She built the business from the ground up with a $500,000 initial investment together with her friend Lenoria Addison, an executive and former producer at Awesomeness Television network; she also reached out for advice to her points of reference in the industry, in particular Queen Latifah and Tyler Perry. While Key TV is targeted at young generations and its content steers towards Black audiences, its main goal is making the entertainment industry accessible by both deconstructing and grounding the production process, and giving young creators an opportunity to have their voice heard.
Koji Steven Sakai and Quentin Lee - IMDB
86. Quentin Lee and Koji Steven Sakai (Co-Founders): Quentin Lee, an American Canadian born in Hong Kong, is a writer, director, and producer, as well as Festival Director of the Yale in Hollywood Fest. Koji Steven Sakai is a writer/producer whose works have already been streamed on big names like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. He has written nine features and produced seven, and Quentin has directed one of the most successful movies that Koji has written, The People I’ve Slept With (2009).
Together, in 2020 the two have founded Asian American Movies (AAM), a new streaming platform that offers a wide and curated selection of Asian American movies, documentaries, shorts, and shows.
Uzo Ometu
85. Uzo Ometu: Founder of BlackOakTV, streaming platform exclusively serving African American audiences with targeted content. Creating a space by Black people, for Black people. “Forget the establishment, forget what they promise, [...] at BlackOakTV we are helping creators do more, say more, and get more”.
With both a Bachelor’s and MBA from Columbia, Ometu’s career started at Morpheus Media, a digital media agency, where he worked on audience development for names as big as ABC News, The Economist, and ESPN. Later he worked for Google in the Product and Sales team, and YouTube in the Content Partnership division. The combination of these experiences led him to start BlackOakTV as a first step to have an individual impact in the media and entertainment industry.
Andrew Young and Martin Luther King III - Jemal Countess
84. Martin Luther King III & Andrew Young (Co-Founders): More than ten years ago, Martin Luther King III, son of Martin Luther King Jr., and former Atlanta mayor and UN ambassador Andrew Young founded the first African American-targeted TV network Bounce TV. In 2016 they launched a companion SVOD service called Brown Sugar, deemed as “just like Netflix, but Blacker”. At lunch, the brand ambassadors were actors Pam Grier and Fred Williamson, and rapper Rick Ross.
Bounce TV offers a selection of ‘70s and ‘80s blaxploitation movies, and as it grows, they will also explore the possibility of producing their own original content.
Jonathan Ng Sposato - Joy Sauce
83. Jonathan Ng Sposato: Joy Sauce is a media streaming platform where AAPI representation is not only included - it’s the default. Joy Sauce’s founder Jonathan Ng Sposato, half-Chinese and half-Korean, wanted to create a space where Asian talent can be showcased through dramas, podcasts, written editorials, and many other forms of expression. Jonathan is a former employee of Microsoft and founder and CEO of Geekwire, a news site focused on the tech industry. He recalls that, when he was young, he did indeed see himself portrayed on the screen, but always in negative or secondary roles. With Joy Sauce, Jonathan wants to flip the narrative, making AAPI representation positive, flattering, and leading.
The goal is to break away from the cultural stereotypes that have been so tightly bound to the different Asian nationalities, unifying them in the worst way possible, but instead to celebrate those differences in all their depth and nuances.
Chaz Bottoms
82. Chaz Bottoms: Chaz Bottoms is a director, storyboard artist, writer, and owner of CBA Studios. Chaz has conducted projects with and produced content for Disney, Cartoon Network, Sesame Street, Bleacher Report, and many others. He has also worked as a character designer for Nickelodeon Animation and as a storyboard artist at Netflix Animation. Chaz has received the Shadow & Act Rising Artist Award, and many of Chaz’s student short films have premiered at film festivals across the globe. His 2016 student film Introvert was a part of Season 6 of ABFF Independent and is currently airing on AspireTV.
CBA Studios is a Black-owned animation studio based in Los Angeles. Its clients range from Disney, Apple TV, John Legend, Steve Harvey, Lil Nas X, Lebron James, Adult Swim, and more. As one of the few, Black-founded animation studios in the world, CBA has collaborated with diverse brands and creators to bring stories to life while combining Black culture, storytelling, and heart. The studio’s founder, Chaz Bottoms, has been featured in Forbes’ “30 Under 30 Hollywood & Entertainment” for his commitment to diverse and powerful storytelling.
Faith Bautista - Facebook
81. Faith Bautista: In January 2023, philanthropist and entrepreneur Faith Bautista founded ChimeTV, the first and only Asian-owned network channel that targets an Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) audience. The 24-hour English-language channel offers content ranging from TV series to food, from lifestyle to sports - a staggering 70% of which is run in the US for the first time. ChimeTV broadcasts via Spectrum Select TV, the brand name of the broadband connectivity company and cable operator Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: CHTR) that reaches 32 million customers across 41 States.
In addition to being ChimeTV’s founder and CEO, Faith Bautista also founded the National Diversity Coalition (NDC), a nonprofit public benefit corporation that is present at many governmental levels to ensure advocacy for minorities and low-income communities. NDC’s mission is to “strengthen America and all its diverse communities through advocacy, collaboration, and economic empowerment.” Bautista is also the President and CEO of National Asian American Coalition (NAAC), another non-profit organization that offers an array of funding programs that help both privates and small businesses, among which an aid in graceful exit strategies for homeowners during foreclosures, loan modification and credit score improvement, down-payment assistance, and micro-loans to incentivise entrepreneurship among people with lower initial resources. It is thanks to these accomplishments that, in 2017, Faith Bautista was appointed by the Trump Administration to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund Community Advisory Board, thus being able to effectively influence governmental decisions first-hand.