After the success of the March 2021 Owning It Accountability Challenge, we’re back for our second cohort but this time we’re covering pitch decks and reels!

Overview

After the success of the March 2021 Owning It Accountability Challenge, we’re back for our second cohort but this time we’re covering pitch decks and reels! 

Are you working on a pitch deck you’ve been telling yourself to complete, but just can’t get past that one stumbling block? Is the last step you need to find your next producer, funder or business partner the deck you can’t complete? Looking for someone to hold you accountable to make sure you move forward in the next steps in your business and/or project? This challenge is for you! 

Submit by Friday, July 16th to be considered to participate in our next accountability challenge for pitch decks. If selected, you’ll be paired with another woman or nonbinary creator to be your partner to support you over the month of August to complete your pitch deck. 

You’ll be connected to a mentor to meet with throughout the month, have an opportunity to attend a pitch deck workshop and the challenge will culminate in a feedback session with industry leaders. Also by participating in this challenge, you will have an opportunity to receive a free formation of your LLC or corporation provided by eMinutes Arts and attend a workshop about this process. 

FOR THIS COHORT, WE ARE SELECTING ONLY TEN (10) WOMEN AND NONBINARY CREATORS AND/OR ENTREPRENEURS TO PARTICIPATE TO ENSURE WE PROVIDE THE BEST BEST BESPOKE EXPERIENCE FOR THE COHORT. 

APPLYING TO THE PROGRAM DOES NOT GUARANTEE PARTICIPATION. 

THE DEADLINE TO SUBMIT IS FRIDAY, JULY 16TH. SEE BELOW FOR THE PARTICIPATION CRITERIA, KEY DATES, MENTORS AND FEEDBACK LEADERS.

SELECTED PARTICIPANTS WILL BE NOTIFIED BY JULY 30TH.

Your submission fee goes to support The Owning It program. 

We hope you’ll join us!

INSTRUCTIONS TO APPLY:

• Sign up here on this site and pay the submission fee.
• Apply with more details here to ensure your application will be considered.

KEY DATES:

• Tuesday, June 15th: Submissions Open 
• Monday, June 28th: Owning It Accountability Challenge Information Session 
• Friday, July 16th: Deadline to Submit 
• Wednesday, July 28th: Notifications of selected projects 
• Monday, August 2nd: Accountability Challenge Begins for selected participants 
• Wednesday, August 4th: eMinutes Arts: Forming Corporations and LLCs for selected participants 
• Wednesday, August 11th: Pitch Deck Workshop for selected participants 
• Tuesday, August 31st: Pitch Deck Feedback Session for selected participants 
• **By participating in this program you are also committing to meeting with your partner and mentor at least three times throughout the month of August as well as to attend the workshops and reels feedback session. 

CRITERIA: 

• You are a woman or nonbinary creator. 
• You are working on a deck that you can use to pitch your project or company to potential financiers or partners.  
• Applicants should have experience and training within at least one of these fields:

• Directing
• Producing
• Production Company 
• Screenwriting 
• Small business in film and entertainment (can include production company, entertainment platform, event business, etc) 

• You have worked on the pitch deck within the last year.
• This is at least your second draft of the pitch deck. 
• Does not have to be New York based to participate in the challenge. 
• To participate in the challenge, you must commit to meeting with your accountability partner at least three (3) times during the challenge. You also must attend the Pitch Deck workshop, the eMinutes Arts workshop and the final feedback session. 
• Your goal of participating in this challenge is to refine your current pitch deck for potential funding and partnership opportunities. At the end of the challenge, you will prepare a five (5) minute pitch and receive feedback from a panel of industry leaders. 

Panelists

Shar Biggers

Provoke Design - Founder/Creative Director

FEEDBACK LEADER — Shar is the Creative Director and Founder of Provoke Design. An Atlanta, GA native, she holds an MBA in business management and is a graduate of the Portfolio Center of Design. She's attained years of experience working on some of the greatest brands for Fortune 500's and helping over 10 million Americans say "I'm with her" for Hillary Clinton. As a champion of "all things branding", nothing is more enjoyable for her than helping ambitious startups, and underserved organizations such as women-led and BIPOC-owned businesses find their purpose for existing. She unearths and establishes the soul of their company through brand strategy and expresses it through various media (from digital to print), in a way that disrupts industries and gains loyal fans. She's attained years of experience working on some of the greatest Fortune 500 brands and helping over 10 million Americans say "I'm with her" for Hillary Clinton. Today, Shar has made solving problems her business for the up-and-comers of the world and the undervalued — helping them make their mark on the world.

Meghan Ross

Seed&Spark - Head of Creator Success

FEEDBACK LEADER — Meghan Ross is a writer, producer, director, comedian, and activist from New York, based in Austin. She hosts the biweekly Instagram Live series No One Asked For This and previously hosted the all-women-and-non-binary late night show, That Time of the Month. Her latest shorts premiered on The New Yorker and made their Best of 2020 list: If You Ever Hurt My Daughter, I Swear to God I’ll Let Her Navigate Her Own Emotional Growth featuring narration by Jon Hamm, which was nominated for The Webby Awards in 2021, and Finally a Female Presidential Candidate Likable Enough For Men featuring narration by Rachel Bloom. Her writing has appeared in VICE's Broadly, Reductress, The Toast, IFC, Slackjaw, TV Without Pity, Femsplain, and some more defunct but beloved sites. She previously worked for VICELAND and SundanceTV, and is currently the Head of Creator Success at Seed&Spark.

Instructors

Eminutes Arts

eMinutes Arts is a supporter of The Gotham’s Owning It program. eMinutes Arts will present a workshop on the formation of your LLC or corporation.

Meghan Ross

Seed&Spark - Head of Creator Success

WORKSHOP LEADER — Meghan Ross is a writer, producer, director, comedian, and activist from New York, based in Austin. She hosts the biweekly Instagram Live series No One Asked For This and previously hosted the all-women-and-non-binary late night show, That Time of the Month. Her latest shorts premiered on The New Yorker and made their Best of 2020 list: If You Ever Hurt My Daughter, I Swear to God I’ll Let Her Navigate Her Own Emotional Growth featuring narration by Jon Hamm, which was nominated for The Webby Awards in 2021, and Finally a Female Presidential Candidate Likable Enough For Men featuring narration by Rachel Bloom. Her writing has appeared in VICE's Broadly, Reductress, The Toast, IFC, Slackjaw, TV Without Pity, Femsplain, and some more defunct but beloved sites. She previously worked for VICELAND and SundanceTV, and is currently the Head of Creator Success at Seed&Spark.

Moderators

Melissa Adeyemo

Ominira Studios - Founder

MENTOR – Melissa Adeyemo is a Nigerian-American film producer and media entrepreneur. Melissa founded Ominira Studios, a US-based production company, to create content that speaks to the diversity and expansiveness of the global African diaspora. Melissa produces as a form of activism and her company advocates for who black people are holistically and sets to transform the prevailing representation of those people globally. Her first feature, Eyimofe, premiered at the 2020 Berlinale Film Festival, where it was nominated for the GWFF Best First Feature Film Award. Eyimofe was a recipient of NYU’s 2018 Purple List Award, a 2019 IFP Narrative Lab recipient and has gone on to premiere at 20+ film festivals internationally. The film was recently acquired by Janus Films and the Criterion Collection. Melissa is currently working on her first documentary feature, Dusty and Stones, which was a recipient of the Keep The Lights On Fund in association with XTR Film Society, Wavelength Productions, and Park Pictures and was a part of 2019’s Only in New York Program for Doc NYC. Dusty and Stones is a fellow of the 2021 Gotham Documentary Lab. Within the last year, Melissa was a 2020 Cannes Producers Fellow and a Creative Producers Indaba Fellow, an inaugural fellowship for African producers in partnership with EAVE, the Sundance Producers Lab, and IFFR. She is also a Gotham Episodic Lab Fellow and an Attagirl Development Lab Fellow. Prior to becoming a producer, Melissa helped build out ROK Studios for iROKOtv, a Lagos based media and technology start-up. Melissa also worked at Nickelodeon, New Line Cinema and Women Make Movies and she started her filmmaking career on Spike Lee’s, Inside Man, and Steven Spielberg’s, Munich. Melissa holds an MBA from New York University's Stern School of Business in Entrepreneurship, Strategy, and Entertainment, Media and Technology (EMT), and received her BA from Columbia University, in African Studies with an independent concentration in Media and Film.

Kia Brooks

The Gotham - Deputy Director

MENTOR — Kia Brooks is the Deputy Director of The Gotham Film and Media Institute (formerly IFP). Kia’s experience in strategic communications (including PR and Marketing) and events spans over a decade and she enjoys supporting and advising creators and entrepreneurs in taking the next steps in their projects and careers. At The Gotham, she oversees the organization’s programming, membership and marketing and is the founder of The Gotham’s Owning It program that supports women and non-binary media makers and entrepreneurs who break boundaries in the media and entertainment industry. Previous to working at the Gotham, Kia worked in film publicity for companies such as Focus Features, Oscilloscope Laboratories and Tribeca Film Festival. She has a Bachelors of Arts in Public Communication from American University and is currently enrolled in a Fundraising Certificate Program at New York University.

Cait Carvalho

The Gotham - Director of Curriculum

MENTOR — Cait Carvalho is an artist and educator with over eight years of experience teaching digital and analog forms of filmmaking from K-12 to college level students. She is currently the Director of Curriculum at The Gotham. Cait began her journey in NYC in 2012 as the Operations intern for The Gotham Film and Media Institute (formerly IFP) and Public Relations intern at Anthology Film Archives. She was hired by both organizations after her internships were completed. Since then, Cait has become an integral member of The Gotham community, Theater Manager and Digital Projectionist at Anthology Film Archives, as well as a unique voice within New York City’s independent and avant-garde communities. She has taught a range of courses and classes: from animation and digital forms of filmmaking in elementary schools throughout Brooklyn, to documentary and digital design courses at Hunter College and Barnard College. She also teaches 16mm filmmaking courses with the non-profit organization Mono No Aware. Cait received her Bachelor’s degree in Communications with a concentration in Film Production and a minor in Literature from Fitchburg State University. She recently completed her MFA through Hunter College’s Integrated Media Arts program in 2019.

Elizabeth Charles

Syrn Media - Founder

MENTOR — Elizabeth Charles has over a decade of experience in media and entertainment across radio, commercials, branded content, music videos, short films and television in the Caribbean and United States. Elizabeth works to champion content that exemplifies inclusive and diverse storytelling from multicultural voices. She is an MBA/MFA graduate of NYU Stern School of Business and NYU Tisch School of the Arts. As a producer, Elizabeth’s short films have received awards from several film festivals including Clermont Ferrand and the Emerging Filmmaker Award in 2017 and 2018 from Palm Springs Shortfest, additionally, she has produced two Vimeo Staff Picks. Her projects have amassed >20m digital views. She is a 2020 Sundance Creative Producing Fellow and recipient of the Mark Silverman Honor. Elizabeth founded Syrn Media, a startup that aims to empower underrepresented filmmakers, they are creating digital platform that centralizes access to film grants; thereby democratizing access to film grant funding.

Charlotte Reekers

FIPADOC Forum - Head

MENTOR — Charlotte Reekers is the freshly appointed head of FIPADOC Forum in Biarritz (France), where she will develop the industry days during the FIPADOC festival in January. In addition, she is leading a workgroup for the newly formed Documentary Association Europe (DAE) to create a strategic plan for their membership services, and she works as an independent film consultant. Recently she was the Senior Program Manager Documentary at the Gotham, where she organized documentary programs, labs, and the Spotlight on Documentaries Project Forum. During her tenure at the Gotham, she also set up international programs with the EFM Market in Berlin and the Korean Film Council (KOFIC). Before moving to New York from Amsterdam, she was a manager for 4-years at IDFA Forum, the largest co-production market for documentary film in Europe. She also held positions at Sheffield Doc/Fest (UK), sales agent Fortissimo Films, and the Made in NY Media Center. She has a degree in Cultural Anthropology and is currently enrolled in the Executive Program in Arts & Culture Strategy at the University of Pennsylvania.