My Mission

People say TV makes you stupid, but personally, I don’t know where I’d be without Dance Moms and Raven-Symoné. I could never afford to take consistent dance or voice lessons, so by the time I got to high school it felt like I was playing catch up. I was sophomore when I learned what an ingenue was, competing with girls with the “right sound,” who’s also been training with private teachers since they were 3 years old. 

I auditioned for a play in the sixth grade and was “cast” as the smoke machine backstage. Two years later for a musical, I went in with an 16 bar cut and was given a costuming gig. Meanwhile, I had been watching, learning and respecting the process, and while I was still really green in high school, I got my first leading role in a play my freshman year. A couple years later, I was the first in our theatre program to become a Young Arts winner, worked a weekend job to pay for voice lessons to figure out what that “sound” was and how to find my own, and after winning the gold medal at NAACP’s ACT-SO competition, used the money to pay for my college auditions. I haven’t booked a costuming gig since (although I’m probably not qualified for it).

In theatre I found my voice, and in filmmaking I found my power. I learned if you’ve got something to say, no one will believe in it more than you, so you might as well give yourself the permission and the platform to. When I learned the beauty behind telling the stories that mattered to me, crafting each shot as a concentrated thought, my words coming from my own mouth, knowing what ingenues were just weren’t as important anymore. I was, and am more than what they told me I was or what I lacked. 

I’m on a journey of self love, which is simply owning my experience and how God created me, and part of my mission is to tell stories of our awkwardness, our love, our gospels, because we have enough of our pain and trauma. Those stories have to matter too, because they’re just as real. We just need to see them. That’s what I need not just as an artist, but a woman, and I must feed her first.