Marva Smalls, ViacomCBS' Global Head of Inclusion. Courtesy of ViacomCBS
“The Office of Global Inclusion (OGI) is benefitting greatly from the integration of diversity and inclusion legacy teams from Viacom and CBS,” said the memo. “Diversity and inclusion efforts have been a priority on both sides, creatively and corporately, and together we’re building on those accomplishments, doubling down in our work toward making inclusion, equity and belonging cornerstones of our culture and business.”
In addition, ViacomCBS has assembled a global diversity and inclusion team that includes Tiffany Smith-Anoa’i, Jason Williams, Stephanie Phelps, Wincie Knight and Jeanne Mau. They will work with Smalls to help bolster diversity and inclusion at ViacomCBS and foster initiatives that help promote representation.
“I’m thrilled to be able to combine these two amazing teams into one, as we continue our work around making inclusion, equity and belonging a cornerstone of ViacomCBS’ culture and business,” Smalls told Deadline. “I couldn’t be more excited to have such a strong leadership team in place to help ViacomCBS build on our progress, advance our initiatives and break new ground in driving diversity and inclusion with our employees, talent, suppliers and business partners everywhere.”
The news comes shortly after CBS unveiled a new plan to step up their efforts to be more inclusive to underrepresented television creators and writers. On Monday morning, the broadcast network has committed 25% of its script development budget to projects from creators, writers and producers who are Black, Indigenous and people of color. The initiative is set to kick off with the 2021/22 development season. In addition, ViacomCBS committed $5 million to social justice causes in June in the midst of the events following the death of George Floyd. It was in June when CEO Bob Bakish announced that Smalls would be integrating the diversity and inclusion teams from CBS and Viacom. He also shared the scaling of existing initiatives and the launching of new ones.
Read the full memo from Smalls about the merging of the teams and bios of the leadership team below.
Colleagues,
The Office of Global Inclusion (OGI) is benefitting greatly from the integration of diversity and inclusion legacy teams from Viacom and CBS. Diversity and inclusion efforts have been a priority on both sides, creatively and corporately, and together we’re building on those accomplishments, doubling down in our work toward making inclusion, equity and belonging cornerstones of our culture and business. I am pleased to announce the members of my leadership who will work with me and senior leaders to drive inclusion across ViacomCBS.
Tiffany Smith-Anoa’i: Currently Executive Vice President Entertainment Diversity, Inclusion & Communications of CBS Entertainment, Tiffany will assume the role of Executive Vice President, Entertainment Diversity & Inclusion, West Coast, ViacomCBS. In this role, Tiffany will continue to be based in Los Angeles and lead entertainment-focused diversity and inclusion initiatives across CBS Entertainment, Showtime Networks, Media Networks and Paramount Pictures. Tiffany, an advocate and authority in this space, will oversee creative development programs, talent initiatives and outreach to agencies, multicultural coalitions, guilds and other key inclusion stakeholders. Current dedicated west coast team members will report up to her.
Jason Williams: Jason, Senior Vice President, Global Inclusion Strategy at Viacom, will assume the role of Senior Vice President, Global Inclusion Strategy, ViacomCBS. Based in New York, Jason will focus on both corporate and entertainment diversity and inclusion initiatives across ViacomCBS, including executing our corporate inclusion strategy, managing relationships with our major internal and external partners, serving on key enterprise-wide councils, and partnering with the Sourcing and Procurement teams on expanding the Supplier Diversity Program. Rose Hatcher, Director of Supplier Diversity, will now have a dotted line report to Jason.
Stephanie Phelps: Stephanie has expanded her role to serve as Vice President, Global Inclusion, ViacomCBS. Stephanie is based in New York and will lead the integration and expansion of our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), manage the development and delivery of diversity and inclusion training modules, and the budget operations for OGI. She will also be responsible for special events and outreach to partner organizations and key civil rights stakeholders. Note that Stephanie was a member of the initial team that launched D&I programs for legacy Viacom, beginning with MTV Networks.
Wincie Knight: Wincie, our UK-based Senior Director, Global Inclusion Strategy for Viacom will continue in that role for ViacomCBS. She will focus primarily on diversity and inclusion corporate initiatives for International and the growth and development of our ERGs outside the U.S., partnering with international regulatory organizations. Wincie will also be responsible for diversity and inclusion training across our footprint in Europe.
Jeanne Mau: Jeanne, Senior Vice President, CBS Entertainment Diversity and Inclusion will be Senior Vice President, Global Inclusion, ViacomCBS. Based in Los Angeles, Jeanne will oversee the ViacomCBS Writers Mentoring Program, Directors Initiative, Viewfinder Emerging Directors Program and Nickelodeon Writers and Artist Program. Jeanne will continue to build partnerships with executives and producers to create access for artists and creators across all platforms of our business. As part of her role, she will also establish initiatives that inspire and foster innovation, and cultivate a diverse, world-class talent pool of content drivers.
With this highly experienced and passionate leadership team in place, the Office of Global Inclusion is well positioned to amplify our programs, break new ground, and make inclusion the fully immersive experience it needs to be for our employees, our on and off-screen talent, and our suppliers and business partners. Please join me in congratulating my leadership team. Our collective OGI team looks forward to working with every member of our global ViacomCBS family as we continue this important work at a time when it’s needed more than ever. Thank you.
Ours is a shared journey.
Marva
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From The Hollywood Reporter:
Race-Equity Consultants in Demand in Hollywood: "Never Once Have We Been So Busy"
Diversity and inclusion experts are sought more than ever by entertainment companies: "It's about dismantling racism."
"Never once have we been so busy and has the outcry been so enormous for help, for resources, for workplace climate assessments. It has been a really intense past four weeks. I will say that so many studios and agencies and entertainment companies here in L.A. have called," says USC professor Shaun Harper, executive director of the USC Race and Equity Center, who advises clients such as Bad Robot and Time magazine on DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion). He's part of a handful of experts who have been working with Hollywood companies on town halls, bias trainings and action plans for years, exponentially so in the wake of the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the racial reckoning that has followed suit. They've been especially in demand recently at companies that do not have a fleshed-out DEI team in place to fall back on.
The consultants come from a variety of backgrounds. Marya Bangee — executive director of Harness, an organization founded by America Ferrera, Wilmer Valderrama and Ryan Piers Williams — previously was a project director at UCLA, working to increase access to higher education in impoverished areas of the city. Rashid Shabazz, chief marketing and storytelling officer at the civil rights advocacy organization Color of Change, served as a program officer at the Open Society Foundations before joining the nonprofit and now works with UTA, Netflix, Participant and Amazon. Willie Jackson, a consultant and senior facilitator for the diversity strategy firm ReadySet (clients include Verizon Media and Amazon) has a résumé that includes founding Abernathy, a magazine for Black men. "I'm brokering conversations," says Jackson, including "confidential focus groups and one-on-ones" and "consulting sessions with members of leadership and executives." Most of these discussions are confidential and protected by NDAs; consultants would not disclose the fees they charge.
Many stressed to THR that they are not interested in working with companies seeking a quick fix, such as creating PR spin, bringing in a one-off speaker or making an optical hire. "There's a lot of people who are willing to check a box and have someone come and speak," says Bangee, who has done programming with Netflix, NBCUniversal and Sundance. "That doesn't mean change." Adds Harper, "I've seen this happen where a company will hire a chief diversity officer, [but] that person has no power, no budget and no staff, and they're expected to somehow move the needle on DEI. And it doesn't move very far, because it all falls on that one person."
They advise that, rather than focusing on a company's image in this moment, businesses should be looking for long-term, sustainable solutions. "We also do a lot of work in terms of culture change and narrative work," says Color of Change's Shabazz, who leads the nonprofit's Hollywood division, "working with production houses, studios, influencers and entertainers in helping to empower Black creatives to assure accurate depictions of Black people."
Color of Change is not alone; a number of these groups have been focused for years on getting underrepresented writers staffed and making sure that films and TV shows represent authentically diverse stories, a prominent one being the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) Hollywood Bureau. "Tolerating a community is not enough — they have to be respected and accepted," says bureau director Sue Obeidi, whose background includes an MBA in marketing. MPAC notably helped create the first Muslim character on ABC's Grey's Anatomy as well as the hijab-wearing Muslim-American superhero Zahra on Nickelodeon's Glitch Techs.
"When one is talking about Muslims [onscreen], often they are not talking about Black Muslim narratives," continues Obeidi. "Every single opportunity to make a character a Black Muslim, specifically a Black Muslim woman, I take."
But with most film and TV production shut down because of COVID-19 and the call for change at an all-time high, most of the work that can be executed right now is internal. Multiple experts say a 360-degree approach, using data and discussions to analyze company culture from several perspectives, is the most effective way to enact change. "Time is working with our center to deliver a dozen high-quality professional learning experiences related to race and other dimensions of DEI, one per month. We're also doing a workplace racial climate assessment and strategic advising of the executive leadership team," says Harper of his yearlong partnership with the magazine, which includes addressing issues like "Retaining and Advancing Employees of Color."
Bangee also advises clients not to put the burden of change on Black employees. "What I'm hearing internally from companies is that the people of color staff is overwhelmed," she says. "They don't have the support they need and they're expected to lead this work on top of the work that they're already doing."
Dr. Kira Banks, co-founder of Saint Louis University's Institute for Healing, Justice and Equity, recently partnered with WarnerMedia to lead small group discussions there. "It's going to take time," she stresses. "We feel like we want to fix it quickly, but it took a long time to get to this pattern, so it's going to take intentional and ongoing work to get out of it."
What does this work look like? Dr. Steven Jones, founder of Jones, a company of organizational psychologists that has worked with Universal Music Group and Valence Media (parent company of The Hollywood Reporter), gives it a clear lens. "Is it racist or is it anti-racist?" he says plainly. "It's anti-racist if the outcomes of the decisions create greater representation of Black people. If decisions and policies keep the status quo — or create a greater inequity — then your systems are racist. We need white people in the industry to stand up and to have a zero-tolerance policy for racism. That's different to me than a cancel culture. It's about a commitment culture, a commitment to dismantling racism."
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From The Royal Gazette:
A guiding light for children
Kay Wilson Stallings had her career mapped out by the age of 10.
She wanted a job in television, children’s television specifically.
It’s how she ended up at Sesame Workshop, the home of Big Bird, Elmo, Abby Cadabby and their many muppet pals.
“Today there is a lot of media and a lot of things competing for children’s attention. In some ways children have developed a more sophisticated palate,” said Ms Wilson Stallings, the twin sister of health minister Kim Wilson.
“I love that Sesame Street is the gold standard of international media.”
She got her start answering telephones for The Oprah Winfrey Show and made her way up the ranks until her work on a talk show for children reaffirmed her earlier goal.
“After ten years I decided I just wanted to do kids’ content,” she said. “I moved to New York. The two biggest places to work in children’s television in New York are Sesame Workshop and Nickelodeon.
“I was very fortunate that a friend of a friend’s babysitter knew someone at Nickelodeon. They got me in the door.”
Ms Wilson Stallings so impressed Brown Johnson, a recognised leader in children’s television, that the Nickelodeon executive created a role for her.
“I have been really fortunate to have people who saw my talent and really spoke on my behalf,” she said.
Blues Clues had just launched; Dora the Explorer and Little Bill were in the works. Ms Wilson Stallings built on that, developing more than 30 shows during her 16 years with the television channel.
When Ms Johnson moved over to Sesame Workshop in 2015, Ms Wilson Stallings followed.
Eager to help the non-profit expand into other areas, she created Sesame Studios for YouTube. She also helped develop the first new Sesame Workshop shows in nearly a decade: Esme&Roy, Helpsters and Ghostwriter.
“Children were watching much more content on digital platforms like YouTube,” said Ms Wilson Stallings who had been senior vice-president of creative development, but was last month promoted to executive vice-president of creative and production.
“Our mission is to help children grow smarter, stronger and kinder. Wherever children are, that’s where we want to be.”
In her new role she oversees development of new content and Sesame Street spin-offs, and works more closely with their international partners. A lot of her time is spent dealing with producers and creators, reading scripts and looking at animation tests.
“I also listen to talent voiceovers, casting and music,” she said. “That is the good part of my day, being actively involved in the creative component of the content we make.”
Recognising just how difficult it is for women and people of diverse backgrounds to get a job in television if they didn’t know someone she created The Sesame Workshop Writers’ Room. An eight-week programme, it is designed to provide opportunities for minority writers.
“All writers who take part are talented and experienced writers, but it is giving them an opportunity to be in the room,” she said. “We get 600-plus applicants a year and we narrow it down to eight to ten fellows that participate.”
Industry experts help the fellows take their work from premise to script in hope that it “can be pitched to a distributor”.
Ms Wilson Stallings is not the first Bermudian to be involved with Sesame Workshop. Michael Frith, a veteran of Jim Henson’s Muppets team, honed his skills on Sesame Street back in the 1970s; Mel Ming was president and chief executive of Sesame Workshop from 2011 until his retirement in 2014.
She was born in Panama to Bermudians Glenda Dawn Barclay Gunter and Sayeed Ramadan. Her father was in the US Army at the time.
When their parents divorced, she and her sister Kim moved with their mother to the United States.
Ms Wilson Stallings returns to the island several times a year to visit her family.
“If I had known we were going to be under quarantine for so long, I probably just would have come home and stayed there,” she said. “I don’t know when I will be able to go again.”
Her 13-year-old son, Cortez, was often her muse when he was younger.
“I still share stuff with him,” she said. “I might be looking for a variety of designs. I might say which ones do you like? He has great creative instincts. Nine times out of ten things he chooses are successful.”
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More Nick: Nickelodeon Upfront 2020 Roundup!
Originally published: Monday, July 13, 2020 at 20:23 BST.
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