Yahoo News Hillman Grad Mentorship Lab Sets Third Year Following Success
Hillman Grad said Wednesday that its Hillman Grad Mentorship Lab, the eight-month, tuition-free program that has offered support and opportunities to marginalized creatives for the past two years, will return for a third year.
A program of the Hillman Grad Foundation, the lab was founded by Lena Waithe, Rishi Rajani and Justin Riley in 2021. The one-of-a-kind program offers mentees the opportunity to enhance their creative skill-set through personalized instruction from entertainment professionals, creating pathways to bring more people from diverse backgrounds into the industry.
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Committed to infusing new narratives and perspectives in front of and behind the camera, the Hillman Grad Mentorship Lab provides a slate of workshops, educational resources, professional development, and networking opportunities for a cohort of diverse writers, actors and aspiring creative executives. Tracks include television writing, screen acting and executive development, with instructors including Carolyn Michelle Smith and Behzad Dabu (co-directors of Acting Track) and Michael Svoboda (director of Writing Track) among others. The program is overseen by executive director Lacy Lew Nguyen Wright.
“Our Mentorship Lab provides creatives of color with genuine support and investment that our communities often don’t receive. In addition to training and access, the lab gives emerging writers, actors, and executives a community of peers that will support each other throughout their careers,” Wright said.
The mentees will have a chance to work with guests ranging from professional actors to directors, casting directors, editors, union reps, publicists and more. Almost all are from underrepresented communities just like the mentees. A sampling of previous guests includes Cynthia Erivo, Kendrick Sampson, Carmen Cuba, and Femi Oguns.
Mentorship Lab graduates from the first two years of programming are already finding inroads into the industry, with varying jobs on productions such as L Word: Generation Q, the HBO and A24 series adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s bestseller The Sympathizer, limited series We Were The Lucky Ones, and Sofia Vergara’s upcoming Netflix limited series Griselda among others.
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