I was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA in the periphery of the shadow of Hollywood. WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!? For me, it means I grew up at a time where I had vague access to an industry that provided great entertainment without representation. I saw bits of myself in narratives about awkward white girls, my physical likeness attributed to the crackheads, baby mamas, hoochie mamas, welfare mamas, slaves, ghetto girls, dookie braid and bamboo earring hip hop girls with long fingernails, and the sassy best friend. As I got a little older and little fatter, my physical likeness was sassy, gum smackin, still long nail curly weave having women who were the edgy school principals with a heart, the broken hearted baby mama with a heart, the DMV worker with no heart, counselor social worker, and sometimes security guard. I got to identify Black beauty with light complexion actresses with curly hair or golden brown actresses with Eurocentric beauty features and long wavy hair like Chile from TLC (or undetectable weaves or a good long perm). This is what drives me to tell the everyday stories of real life. To go beyond the superficial representation and reveal the complex realities of the lives of people we think we know. I want to tell the stories that were absent from my theater studies at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. I want those stories humanized and understood in ways that were missed in my undergraduate studies at California State University where even with my whole psychology degree I still couldn’t find me.
With this spirit in my intentions, I wanted to take some stories of LGBTQ family acceptance off the postcards in our Flatbush, Brooklyn office and give them life. Emmy award winning filmmaker Andre Lambertson joined us on this journey to guide our projects into the world with his cinematic ingenuity and encouraged me to step into the director’s role to do what was always in me to do. Our films, Proud Dad and My Daughter Tyler are the creative interpretation of the lived experience of families who struggled with acceptance. My goal is to expand our reach and ability to share theses heart changing stories to create more love for all marginalized people in our world.

Our team searched for a filmmaker to help us bring our story to life and was very fortunate to receive the support of Andre Lambertson, an Emmy award winning and Oscar shortlist documentary filmmaker most known for his work on The Whole Gritty City (2013), 48 Hours Presents: The Whole Gritty City (2014) and Charm City (2018). On the first day of shooting our first film, My Daughter, Tyler, Andre turned to me and asked " can you work with the actors to make them do things? Get them going?" In that moment is when I became co-director of our film projects!

Although the Project ALY program ended this year, our three films, My Daughter-Tyler, Proud Dad, Not Just A Phase both films continue to be selected for film festivals and have a huge impact on moving the pendulum towards more family acceptance of LGBTQ Youth.