Lena Waithe

Lena Waithe became the first Black woman to win a Primetime Emmy Award for comedy writing when she won for the "Thanksgiving" episode of Master of None in 2017 — an episode she wrote based on her own experience of coming out to her family. That single half-hour of television established her as one of the most important new voices in Hollywood and a groundbreaking figure for Black LGBTQ+ representation in media.

Born in Chicago in 1984, Waithe grew up on the South Side and attended Columbia College Chicago, where she studied cinema. She moved to Los Angeles and spent years working as an assistant and writing spec scripts before her breakthrough. Her production company, Hillman Grad, is named after the fictional HBCU on A Different World — a show that shaped her vision of Black possibility.

Waithe created The Chi for Showtime, a drama series about life on Chicago's South Side that has run for multiple seasons. She has written and produced films including Queen & Slim (2019), a road movie about a Black couple on the run after a traffic stop turns deadly. She has used her platform to advocate for inclusion in Hollywood, mentor emerging Black creators, and push for stories that reflect the full spectrum of Black experience — including queer Black experience, which remains underrepresented.