Talent
Empowering Fearless Storytellers who bring our world into focus.
Talent is at the heart of everything we do. A diversity of voices, perspectives, and experience is critical to our business, our content, and a culture of innovation.
Allyssa Lee
Southern California native ALLYSSA LEE was a journalist before she discovered screenwriting, with bylines in the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, and FOXSports.com, among others. More importantly, she was deemed most likely to survive a zombie apocalypse by her fellow writers on the CW’s Charmed.
Annie Nishida
Annie Nishida is a writer, illustrator, and activist who came of age in the diverse paradise of the San Gabriel Valley, CA. She is a fourth-generation Japanese American, fourth-generation Angeleno, and daughter of a hippie who protested the Vietnam War. Her own activist roots can be traced back to seventh grade, where she led a school-wide frog dissection protest. It was unsuccessful. While studying screenwriting at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, she pitched projects to Adult Swim and Fox, wrote and directed two stage plays performed at Bovard Auditorium, and was nominated for the Humanitas Prize’s Angell Comedy Fellowship. Her projects explore the Asian American experience, focusing on the hilarity and awkwardness of growing up. She was most recently a staff writer on Disney Channel’s GABBY DURAN & THE UNSITTABLES and has freelanced for multiple animated shows. Annie also illustrates social conscious comics and zines, which she exhibits at independent publishing events across California. Her ultimate goal is to help people in marginalized communities feel seen and heard.
Craig T. Williams
Craig is a New York City based Writer/Producer and Editor. Craig’s one hour TV pilot “How Ya Like Me Now”, about the 80’s rap rivalry between Kool Moe Dee and LL Cool J, won 2nd Place in the 2020 Page International Screenwriting Competition. It was also a finalist in the 2020 Film Independent Lab, 2020 Cinestory TV Retreat & Fellowship Competition and the 2020 Stowe Story Lab Fellowship. It was also selected for 2019 IFP Episodic Lab. And was a finalist in both the Sundance 2019 Episodic Lab and the 2019 Tracking B TV Writing Competition. His feature screenplay “Hanging By A Thread” has Viola Davis attached as Executive Producer. “Allergic” a 30 minute comedy, won the ABFF/Turner best original 30 minute comedic pilot in 2018. It also made the 2nd round of Austin Film Festival. During the pandemic he wrote a 30 minute dramedy “Call Me Daddy” - Logline “Tired of waiting for Mrs. Right, a 40 year old emotionally stunted man decides to have a baby on his own to be the father he never had,” has won praises from industry execs. Craig and his extraordinary beautiful and patient wife are approaching their 20th wedding anniversary. They have a spirited 16 year old son and they make their life in the heart of New York City. Craig serves on the Board of Directors of FilmShop, a Media Producers and Independent Filmmakers Collective. He is also a member of the Harlem Dramatic TV Writers Workshop and the Black TV and Film Collective. Craig is a writing mentor for The Craft Institute, The Writers Room 5050 Foundation and for teen filmmakers at Reel Works Mentorship Program in Brooklyn. Craig has traveled the world. He loves tennis and makes a kick ass Mac and Cheese that has brought guests to their knees.
Eric Anthony Glover
Eric Anthony Glover is a feature writer, TV writer, and graphic novelist. He studied screenwriting at Sarah Lawrence College. After his sci-fi feature script earned him a fellowship through Final Draft, Inc., Eric went on to write his first drama pilot, which earned him representation. Additionally, Eric was selected for the 2020 Humanitas Prize New Voices award, NBC’s Writers on the Verge 2020- 21 fellowship, the 2021 Sony Pictures Television Diverse Writers Program, and the 2021 WBD Access Writers Program. As a writer for the arts and entertainment company Meow Wolf, Eric developed storylines and wrote scripts for immersive science fiction exhibits across the country. His graphic novel, BLACK STAR, was just published as a title in Abrams ComicArts’ imprint, Megascope.
Eunice Park
Eunice Park is a Korean American writer who started her career by writing black market college admissions essays and online erotic fiction. Not at the same time though. She soon found her calling in TV and was a 2017 Austin Film Festival finalist and was a 2019 Launch Pad Pilot Competition Top Ten finalist.
Gabriel Vallejo
Gabriel is a Mexican American screenwriter and teaching artist. He teaches self-reflective writing at Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles and at several California state prisons as part of the InsideOUT Writers Prison Insight Program. Growing up in South Los Angeles amidst poverty and gangs, Gabriel graduated UCLA and lived in London for three years, where he earned a Master of Arts in Screenwriting with Distinction from the London Film School. Gabriel is a fellow of the Writers for Writers Diversity Screenwriting Fellowship and an alumnus of the National Hispanic Media Coalition Television Writers Program.
Irving Ruan
Born in China and raised in Southern California, Irving Ruan is a ChineseAmerican writer, comedian, actor, software engineer, and former startup founder. After graduating from the University of California, San Diego with a B.S. in Computer Science, he spent a decade building software and leading teams for places like Blue Origin and the U.S. Department of Energy. Named by Paste Magazine as one of the best humorists writing today, Irving is a writer for The New Yorker magazine and McSweeney's, and his work was included in The New Yorker’s best-of humor writing in 2019 and 2020, and anthologized in McSweeney's 21st anniversary humor collection, Keep Scrolling Till You Feel Something. A graduate of the Second City's improv and sketch writing program in Chicago, Irving draws from his immigrant experience to write comedies about misfits and oddballs who are in search of belonging.
Kareem Fahmy
Kareem Fahmy is a Canadian-born screenwriter, playwright and theatre director of Egyptian descent, who calls New York City home. His plays, which include American Fast, A Distinct Society, The Triumphant, Pareidolia, The In-Between, and an adaptation of the acclaimed Egyptian novel The Yacoubian Building, have been developed at the Atlantic Theatre Company, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Northlight Theatre, Citadel Theatre, New York Stage & Film, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Capital Repertory Theatre, Target Margin Theater, Fault Line Theater, and Noor Theater. He has directed and developed new plays at theaters around the country, including MCC, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The New Group, New Dramatists, The Civilians, Geva Theatre, Pioneer Theatre, Portland Stage, Silk Road Rising, San Diego Rep, and Berkeley Rep. Fellowships/Residencies: Sundance Theatre Lab, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Phil Killian Directing Fellow), The O’Neill (National Directors Fellow), TCG (Rising Leader of Color), Second Stage (Van Lier Directing Fellow), Soho Rep (Writer/Director Lab), Lincoln Center (Directors Lab), New York Theater Workshop (Emerging Artist Fellow). Kareem is co-founder of the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at The Lark and of Maia Directors, a consulting group for organizations and artists engaging with stories from the Middle East. MFA in Theatre Directing: Columbia University. w
Koby Agyeman
Koby graduated from NYU Tisch's Dramatic Writing Program in the Class of 2020. He placed as a semifinalist in the Sundance Episodic Lab, the CBS Writers Mentorship, and his pilot won an award for Outstanding Achievement at NYU. He is currently a writer's apprentice on a Disney show. He grew up in a small town where he struggled with double consciousness and anxiety, as he was one of the few black people or POC. His philosophy in writing is conflict is the source of drama and as people of color, he's always in conflict. Because of this, he writes stories that feature diverse characters that ask questions about race, gender, and politics.
Larry Caldwell
Growing up on a windy island ghost town, Larry Caldwell learned his love of storytelling from his wise, irreverent Native American grandmother, who never “wrote” so much as a grocery list, but who could nevertheless spin one hell of a yarn by firelight. Larry is a genre novelist and loves horror, sci-fi, superheroes, fantasy, etc. His latest book, Farewell Ghost, is a supernatural thriller described as “a love letter to rock music, told to the soundtrack of horror.” It was published in October 2020. Larry also wrote and produced the official book trailer, “Ready Now?” during the pandemic. An Austin Film Festival Award Winner and a current participant in the Warner Media Access Writers Program, Larry fell in love with television’s long-form storytelling watching Game of Thrones, Six Feet Under, Firefly, Lost, and others. He’s previously worked as a staff writer on the supernatural drama, Midnight, Texas.
Lenny Len & Etan Manasse-Piha
LENNY LEN
Lenny is a Chinese-Italian-American writer from a New Hampshire town so small that he won’t even bother giving you the name. He writes comedies grounded in the absurdity of reality with his dashingly suave partner, Etan Manasse-Piha. Lenny is currently the showrunner’s assistant on Apple TV+’s LITTLE AMERICA and WECRASHED. He graduated from Syracuse University where he spent most of his senior year watching and grading all 74 episodes of R.L. Stine’s TV adaptation of GOOSEBUMPS. The highest marks went to “Welcome To Camp Nightmare” (S1, E5): A+. This was not for academia, it was a personal endeavor.
ETAN MANASSE-PIHA
Etan is a first-generation Israeli-American on his mother’s side and third-generation Seattleite on his father’s. He writes comedies grounded in the absurdity of reality with his ridiculously handsome partner, Lenny Len. Etan is currently the showrunner’s assistant on HBO Max’s animated comedy, THE PRINCE. He graduated from Northwestern University where he spent much of his time in improv classes at The Second City and iO Theater. Previously, Etan was the four-time Wrapping Paper Salesperson of the Year at Bryant Elementary. One year he won a portable DVD player.
Lisa Sanaye Dring
Lisa is a playwright transitioning to writing for the screen. She was honored as a recipient of the 2020/21 PLAY LA Stage Raw/Humanitas Prize. Her play The Wicked One was a finalist for the Relentless Award, a finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, a finalist for the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference and a semi-finalist for the O'Neill Playwrights Conference. Kaidan Project: Walls Grow Thin, a piece she co-wrote with Chelsea Sutton, was nominated for 8 Ovation Awards including Best Production (winner of 5). Lisa's work has been developed/produced by The New Group, Actors Theatre of Louisville, East West Players, Circle X, SCF @ Son of Semele, Playwrights’ Arena, Rogue Artists Ensemble, The Motor Company, Theatre of NOTE and with the DCA's Reimagine Public Art Series. She recently served as the head writer on Welcome to the Blumhouse Live, an interactive film event for Blumhouse/Amazon Prime by Little Cinema. Lisa was a member of East West Players’ Playwrights Group and has been awarded fellowships at MacDowell, Blue Mountain Center and Yaddo Her play SUMO was recently named as a finalist for the O'Neill Playwrights Conference and will be workshopped at La Jolla Playhouse in July. She graduated from the University of Southern California.
Malia Dawkins Jennings
Charlotte rooted, New York City cultivated, and in Los Angeles bloom, Malia’s work sprouts from an innate passion for capturing the human experience. The discovery of her family’s history on road trips from her parents, married with first person testimonies from grandparents, great aunts, and great uncles upon arrival, drove a fascination towards storytelling which routed her career ambition towards writing, acting, and producing.
Malia is an alumna of Marymount Manhattan College where she received a BA Theatre Performance Degree and Writing Minor and was also rewarded with the Golden Key for Playwriting. She is also a graduate of Mount Saint Mary’s University (MSMU) where she obtained her Masters in Humanities with an Emphasis in Creative Writing.
During a Writing Children’s Literature course at MSMU, Malia wrote Rapunzel Jackson, the story of a Black girl who's being pulled by her roots into womanhood by her first perm. She produced and starred in the short, which screened at film festivals across the country, and made its broadcast debut on Aspire TV. Malia’s work was also selected as a semi-finalist for the renowned Sesame Workshop Writer’s Room. Malia is honored to have the road trip of her storytelling development ignited with acceptance into the prestigious WBD Access Writers Program.
Malloy Moseley
Malloy Moseley is a comedy writer who resists branding because it reminds her of slavery and tacky clothing. A self-proclaimed "classic American mulatto" and "GenZ–Millennial cusp," Malloy's writing lives in the comedy of traditionally fraught intersections. She has worked on A Black Lady Sketch Show (HBO), Ziwe (Showtime), Woke S1 (Hulu, 2020), Primo (IMDbTV), The Movie Show (SYFY, 2020), and hosts stand up show Content Graveyard at Lyric Hyperion. Malloy writes half-hour cerebral comedy/dramedy, absurdist sketch, and rom-coms. An LA native and Northwestern University graduate, she loves to talk in equal measure about astrology, the tarot, and her critical theory and environmental policy minors. And no, Mercury is not currently retrograde.
Meredith Garcia-Painter
Meredith Garcia-Painter is a recent graduate of the 2020 National Hispanic Media Coalition’s Series Scriptwriters Program. She’s a second generation Mexican American and spent her childhood in a dying Ohio steel town not far from Cleveland. Growing up in a rough neighborhood, she became obsessed with sci-fi, horror, and the occult after a girl was murdered in her backyard. After living in Japan for several months and graduating from John Carroll University with a degree in East Asian studies, Meredith worked as a Middle School teacher in rural Arkansas. Grateful for the experience but unfulfilled, she applied to Loyola Marymount University and made her way to Los Angeles to bring her dark and twisty imagination to life as a writer. Drawing from her own diverse background, Meredith’s stories often feature women of color struggling with identity, family secrets, and being a misfit amongst the crowd. She likes to dwell in a world between comical sarcasm and the dark twisted underbelly of science fiction and crime.
R.B. Ripley
R.B. Ripley is an award-winning drama writer. His one-hour pilot Sugar Land has been optioned and he recently completed a thriller about a controversial congressional candidate who is taken hostage on election day. He is currently adapting the novel Good Morning, Please!, a dramedy about an unorthodox junior high teacher battling an unscrupulous principal. He has also had a made for-television movie produced. Ripley’s pilots have won the Script Pipeline’s First Look Contest and Finish Line Script Competition, twice won the ISA Table Read My Screenplay grand prize and been finalists in the Page International Drama Pilot. In 2020 he was named as one of ISA’s two Fast Track Fellows. After growing up in Pittsburgh as the queer band nerd in a huge, sports-rabid family, Ripley set off on a sexy, hard-rocking career as a professional tuba player – which he left behind to return to his true passion, writing. He’s now known for a mature and unique voice whose stories dive into the uncomfortable truths of complex characters and families - blood and chosen - with panache, humor, and empathy. When not writing, he enjoys baking, traveling, and cheering on the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team (which is proof of his limitless optimism). A graduate of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama, Ripley is repped by Bob Sobhani at Authentic Talent & Literary Management. He now lives in Los Angeles with his amazing husband of twenty years and their pooch.
Richard Nguyen & Vinita Mehta
Vinita Mehta, a tenured psychologist, and Richard Nguyen, a freshly-minted graduate, met by chance at a DC bar. While they were drastically different people, it took just one conversation about their shared passion for fixing broken people to turn them into an improbable writing team. Vinita was destined to be a psychologist after growing up with a mentally ill parent.
After completing her doctorate at Columbia, she produced stories for NBC News, PBS/Nova, and Discovery. But when she experienced a #MeToo story of her own, she returned to clinical practice to empower herself and others. Vinita also blogs for Psychology Today, and is writing a book about romantic love from an evolutionary perspective.
Richard is an Orange County native, reformed member of a small-time gang, and son to Vietnamese refugees. He sought amends and his parents’ approval by attending Harvard. After graduating, he developed Diversity and Inclusion strategies at Gartner, and advised hundreds of mostly white Chief Executives on how to be less racist.
His award-winning Inclusion Index received a standing ovation from Intuit’s CEO, and has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Yahoo! Finance, and Business Wire. Underneath Vinita’s skepticism was a resilient survivor. Underneath Richard’s naïveté was a misfit whose childhood was cut short. These contradictions anchor their collaboration, resulting in stories that bridge their generational, gender, and racial differences. Their work has been a HUMANITAS New Voices Finalist, Tracking Board Top 100 Pilots and Winner of the Mentorship Prize, and a SAGindie Fellowship Winner for the Stowe Story Labs. They most recently graduated from the 2021 CAPE New Writers Fellowship.
Sam Oh
Sam O is a Korean-American writer/comedian from Los Angeles/The Valley. An alum of NBC's Late Night Writers Workshop 2020 Zoom, O’s scripts have been recognized by the Academy Nicholl Fellowship, Writers Guild Initiative, and Launch Pad. O has written and performed comedy at the UCB Theatre and SF Sketchfest. When not writing, O practices Gay Korean Witchcraft™. Oh, and O is short for Oh.
Stephen Crooms
NorCal teacher turned SoCal writer. Character thrillers based on craft, meditation, and life.
Victoria González
Don’t let her chola name “Sad Girl” fool you Victoria González is the happiest Xicana you’ll ever meet. Growing up as a young woman in a family that idolized men, she made every attempt to gain the attention of her parents. She even wrestled, but when the boys on the team refused to touch her, she had to practice with her Mom. With her short-lived wrestling career behind her, Victoria was relegated to the sidelines where she fell in love with comic books and fantasy novels, mainly Lord of the Rings.
Victoria is proud to be the first member of her family to attend college. Where she graduated with a degree in Criminal Justice from Cal State Northridge and enjoyed an early career in higher education. After taking a leap of faith she decided it was time to follow her dream of becoming a TV Writer.
She started in the CBS Mailroom where Her scrappy can-do attitude landed her a gig on CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND and creator Aline Brosh-McKenna became one of her mentors. Victoria has written for the second season of “Saved by the Bell” on Peacock, and “Diary of a Future President” on Disney+. She is a UCB Diversity Scholarship and LTVWG Script Anatomy Scholarship recipient. Victoria’s work exists in the Comedy and Dramedy realm, often telling stories about feminism, economic disparity, and mental health through the lens of joy. She is known for her Dramedy Pilot “Postmodern Frida”. She’s like a human jock jam for the soul, but she’s not afraid to put her mom in a surprise cradle hold for old-time sakes.
Yasmin Almanaseer
Yasmin Almanaseer is a queer, Black & Arab-American writer born in Tallahassee, Florida and raised in the North Bay of California. The child of a Black woman from the Deep South and a Jordanian immigrant, the unique experiences of her family inspired her to become a writer. Yasmin is both a former Outfest OutSet Fellow and a Topple Productions/5050by2020 Disruptors Screenwriting Fellow. Her work has been featured at Outfest Los Angeles and at film festivals around the world.