My guest speaker Actress/Producer/Writer Tanya Young she currently works as a Writer and Producer on two projects – a zombie film and a sitcom -- wrapping in a few weeks. She pays her bills by fundraising for the CMG Short Film Festival in West Hollywood.
A member of the Native American Casting Group and Board Member of the HIV Writers Workshop at Cedars-Sinai, this socially-conscious dramatist was a 2010 Writers Boot Camp Fellow and won the 2001 George Foster Peabody Award and the 2002 Literacy in Media Award for her animation writing for Nickelodeon on “Little Bill.”
Acting on TV shows Mom, The Bold & the Beautiful and Strange Angel, Tanya has studied improve, written skits and performed theater with UCB and Second City. A former election campaign worker, charitable grantmaker and documentary producer, Ms. Young’s Muscogee Creek ancestors hail from the rural American South.
In 2009, Tanya was Story Producer on HBO’s competition docu-series “Brave New Voices” about diverse young slam poets, including the spoken word team from the Santa Fe Indian School and indigenous poets from Honolulu.
A former collaborator with the American Indian Community House, Tanya worked with Member Diana Gubiseh-Ayala to direct a documentary about fellow Native American and “two-spirit” women living with HIV/AIDS. A former Board member of the Manhattan cable access network and active member of the Third Wave Fund!, Tanya grew up believing we’re all here to work together to build a better world. We learn about this and more on “Behind The Real”.
