MISSION STATEMENT
Black Public Media is committed to a fully realized expression of democracy. We support diverse voices by developing, producing and distributing innovative media about the Black experience and by investing in visionary content makers.
HISTORY
Founded in 1979 as the National Black Programming Consortium, Black Public Media (BPM), began because there was a need to encourage the development of films and television programs about the black experience that involved creative risks and addressed the needs of unserved and underserved audiences.
Dedicated to creating a pathway for funding and distribution for Black storytellers, BPM provided seed money for projects along with opportunities for distribution through PBS. For many filmmakers like Spike Lee, Julie Dash, Stanley Nelson, Shola Lynch, and Byron Hurt, BPM became a beacon of support at the earliest stages of their careers. Inspired by a spirit of excellence in stories about the Black experience, BPM’s thoughtful and compelling approach to selecting projects has resulted in supporting a host of award winning and nominated films. By 2006, with an expansion of funding support to include content exclusively for the web (Black Folk Don’t, Evoking the Mulatto, Ask A Muslim), BPM has been able to engage the public in necessary conversations about race, history, and social issues through short narratives and online properties.
Today, after nearly 40 years of historic work, BPM continues to leverage its expertise by investing in innovative content creators, and bringing dynamic programs about the Black experience that provoke, educate, and entertain on and off the screen.
Please join our regular mailing list here for updates on NBPC funding initiatives and projects. Join our social media conversation over at Twitter, or Facebook.
BLACK PUBLIC MEDIA STAFF
leslie fields-cruz
Leslie started at Black Public Media in 2001 managing the program development fund. In 2005, she was promoted to Director of Programming, was crucial to launching AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange, Black Public Media’s signature series now entering its 10th season. In the fall of 2014, Leslie was appointed to serve as Black Public Media’s third Executive Director.
Prior to joining Black Public Media, Leslie was as a Program Coordinator at the Creative Capital Foundation and the Membership Director at the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (AIVF). She served on the board of Women Make Movies from 2005 – 2013.
Leslie lives with her family in Westchester County, where she spends her downtime teaching theater to youth at New Era Creative Space, a community center committed to using the arts as a tool for building a better society.
kay shaw
Kay comes to Black Public Media having served as Director of Communications for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) where she was responsible for launching the organization’s website; coordinating the branding initiative; overseeing all external communications, including media, publications and production issue and event videos; and developing its in-house production facilities.
Prior to joining the staff of LDF in 2000, throughout the 80’s, Ms. Shaw worked for several nonprofit organizations as a community organizer and media consultant. Her community organizing skills were honed at SANE/Freeze where over 6 years she was responsible for outreach, education and training, and media relations within African-American, Latino and Native American communities as the Third World Liaison.
In the 90’s, she transferred her community organizing and media relations skills into a successful career promoting and distributing black independent films for broadcast and theatrical release, including the Sundance award-winning PBS films “Finding Christa” and “Black Press Soldiers without Swords,” and Marlon Riggs’ last documentary “Black Is…Black Ain’t.”
diane carr-joseph
Diane Carr-Joseph serves as the Business Manager for National Black Programming Consortium. She is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the organization including human resources, financial forecasting, resource allocation, fund management, accounting and control. Diane holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Accounting from Baruch College New York.
jama rasul
Jama Rasulov serves as the Digital Media Production Coordinator for Black Public Media, where he creates the company's promotional trailers, and organizes the day to day visual media content of its varying programs. He received his MS in Economics from The Statue University of Tajikistan, in his home country, and is currently working towards his BFA at City College of New York (CUNY). Jama is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society, and was a regional Silver Medalist in Judo wrestling back home in Tajikistan. When he's not studying at CUNY, or working at BPM, Jama finds time to develop the script for his short film "Boy with Bread". Jama joined BPM as an intern in 2015 and is very proud to serve its mission of bringing diverse voices to the public.
BLACK PUBLIC MEDIA BOARD
eric easter
Eric Easter is a producer, author, columnist and speaker who fights for strong public media. The CEO of BLQBOX Digital Studios — a start-up streaming network featuring non-fiction content on the global black cultural experience — and the chairman of NBPC’s board of directors, Mr. Easter is a highly successful creator and producer of multiplatform content with global audience reach. He is a proven leader and innovator in the strategic use of new and emerging digital platforms to create unique business models to drive revenue, build brands, influence audiences and reach new markets. He was most recently chief of digital strategy and VP of Entertainment for Johnson Publishing Company (Ebony Magazine). He also serves on the boards of WHUT, Public Media Platform, the NAACP’s historic CRISIS Magazine and the community advisory panel of AT&T.
quincy b. troupe
Quincy B. Troupe — Senior Vice President, Supply Chain at The Boston Beer Company — is a consumer goods executive with more than fifteen years of supply chain management experience in the consumer food industry. Since 2013, he has served as Vice President, Manufacturing and Supply Chain Strategy, for the Pepperidge Farm division of Campbell Soup Company, Inc., and from 2010-2013 as Vice President, Supply Chain for Campbell North America. Prior to joining Campbell, Mr. Troupe served in various senior operational roles with Mars, Inc. of McLean, Virginia from 1997-2010.
guy-max delphin
After over twelve years of investment experience, Guy-Max Delphin opened Delphin Investments. Currently, he is the Senior Portfolio Manager heading Fundamental Research and Macro/Top-Down overlay. Mr. Delphin’s extensive experience includes the Yale-New Haven Health System as a leading Investment Strategist, Senior Analyst at Fortis Investments, and Senior Associate of Equity Research in the Small-Cap Industrials group, a division of Jefferies & Company, Inc. Mr. Delphin also held an Associate Analyst position within the Prudential Equity Group, LLC. Early in his career, Guy-Max functioned as a quantitative analyst in the Investment Product Design and Risk Management Group divisions of OppenheimerFunds, Inc. In 2012, he joined the NYC Special Education Collaborative, an organization working with charter schools advocating sustainable, high-quality special education programs. Mr. Delphin is on the Stony Brook Foundation Board of Trustees and serves as Chair of the College of Business Advisory Board. His philanthropic activities focus on education and healthcare. Mr. Delphin received a M.S. in Financial Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, in addition to B.S. degrees in both Applied Mathematics and Economics from Stony Brook University.
dawn porter
Dawn Porter is a documentary filmmaker whose first feature, Gideon’s Army, won the Sundance Film Festival Editing Award in 2013 and later broadcast on HBO. The film was nominated for an Independent Spirit award and an Emmy. Dawn’s other films have appeared on PBS’s Independent Lens, OWN and the Discovery Channel. Her latest project, Trapped, explores the impact of laws regulating abortion clinics in the South. It will premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
darryl ford williams
Darryl Ford Williams is the Vice President of Content for WQED Multimedia in Pittsburgh. In her current role at WQED, Ms. Ford Williams oversees the creation, development, production and delivery of all new and existing local, national, international and syndicated television, radio, interactive and educational programming for WQED Multimedia. She led the effort for the PBS series American Masters, August Wilson: The Ground On Which I Stand serving as Executive Producer for this highly acclaimed documentary. Under her leadership, productions have taken WQED documentary teams across the country and abroad to Kenya, Poland, Vietnam and Austria for productions distributed to the PBS system. She also launched an informational television station for the Government of Bermuda.
Prior to her work with WQED, she was the sole proprietor of the Ford-Williams Agency, one of the first companies in the nation to focus on minority recruiting for major market television stations. Throughout her career, Ms. Ford Williams led content and program development for broadcast groups across the country. Her background as a television news producer and news manager is extensive. The following are just a few examples of that work: managing site producer for CBS News in its coverage of September 11—focusing on the Pennsylvania crash site of United Flight 93; coordinating producer for ABC-TV’sGood Morning America; executive producer at WJLA-TV in Washington, DC; news producer at KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh and WBAL in Baltimore.
Ms. Ford Williams’ work has been recognized with many awards, including several Emmy Awards in addition to numerous Emmy nominations. She has been honored by the Easter Seals Society, International Association of Business Communicators, and has won multiple awards from Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters.
steve hissam
With roots in the Midwest, Steve Hissam mixes creativity and strategic agility with solid business acumen to deliver quantifiable results in the ever-changing marketing space.
He began his career on Madison Avenue where he worked on a range of product categories from Mercedes-Benz automobiles to Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink. At Kirshenbaum & Bond he propagated the agency’s distinctive under-the-radar approach to advocacy marketing for clients such as Duckhead apparel and CNBC cable network.
His pioneering social media campaign for Hennessy cognac not only garnered industry awards and praise from The New York Times and Business Week, but also changed the way spirit brands are marketed.
Accepting an offer to work for a client, Steve spent the next phase of his career working in brand management. Leading blue chip companies like Remy Cointreau and LVMH toward creative resolutions across a myriad of business challenges, Steve’s expertise in equity-building initiatives and innovative integrated marketing campaigns have become his hallmark.
Steve established film as an event marketing platform for Grand Marnier, and created strategic partnerships with major and independent film studios and film organizations. Sponsorship of the New York Film Festival achieved exceptional consumer outreach and awareness through a comprehensive public relations program that generated over 100 million impressions.
To fill in knowledge and data gaps in the multicultural space, Steve employed an anthropological approach to insight mining and leveraged his expertise to improve the cultural competency of the organizations.
At Geometry Global, Steve served as a key player in integrating and elevating best-in-class shopper marketing process and practice into the new Mondelez organization and SC Johnson.
Working directly with both brand and field teams, Steve identifies strategic opportunities to reinforce brand equity and drive category growth across multiple classes of trade.
lesley norman
Lesley Norman served as the senior producer for the PBS special 180 Days: A Year Inside An American High School, where she was responsible for the production management, budget development and oversight, content supervision, legal and post-production oversight, and outreach and engagement development, creation and implementation. An experienced production executive, Ms. Norman served as the Executive Director of Filmmakers Collaborative and Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of JumpStart Productions. While at JumpStart, she was the Executive In Charge of the award-winning PBS series NOW. Ms. Norman also served as Vice President and Production Executive of David Grubin Productions and worked on award-winning productions such as The Secret Life of the Brain, Napoleon and Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided. She also worked as a grant reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Science Foundation, Ms. Norman has received numerous honors for creative achievement including Emmy awards for her work on NOW and the Edward R. Murrow award from the Overseas Press Club for her senior producing role on the film Child Brides, Stolen Lives. She was a panelist at Silverdocs, a program participant at RealScreen and produced several panels for the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers. Ms. Norman holds a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in government from Skidmore College.