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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Sumter, South Carolina, to a military family, Jay Ellis spent his childhood inventing new personas for every town he landed in. Too many to count. After college, he realized the NBA wasn’t good enough for him and he didn’t want to crush other players’ dreams as he dominated the league so he decided to take his one-man show to Hollywood, where he got his start on BET’s The Game. Now an accomplished actor, philanthropist, and entrepreneur, Ellis is best known for his role as Lawrence on HBO’s Insecure, for which he won an NAACP Image Award. He appeared alongside Tom Cruise, flying jets through the skies, in the Oscar-nominated film in Top Gun: Maverick. When he’s not on set filming he spends the majority of his days cleaning up the messes that his daughter’s imaginary friend “Jack” made. Karma.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Kendrick Sampson is an actor, producer and activist who leverages his platform and storytelling to shift culture for good.
Growing up in Houston and Missouri aka “Mo City”, Texas, Kendrick Sampson was dropped into a unique and deeply rooted culture of music and art.
His most acclaimed and notable characters from "Nathan" on HBO's Emmy-nominated comedy series, Insecure, to "Ethan" in Prime’s popular romantic comedy Something from Tiffany’s and his personal favorite, the surrealist satire I am a Virgo from Boots Riley - Kendrick has been achieving his lifelong goal of shifting culture through storytelling and uplifting nuanced, diverse, and authentic portrayals of Black men.
He uses his platform to amplify transformational grassroots work in intersectional mental health justice, sexual health and liberation and fighting state violence. Kendrick co-founded BLD PWR which includes a production company and social impact (501c3) arm whose mission is to “Reimagine and Realize the liberated future we know our people deserve” by organizing Hollywood and shifting the culture toward nourishing and protecting nuanced Black, Indigenous, and marginalized leaders and everyday people, especially our storytellers and their stories.