Q&A w/ Lamonia Deanne Brown

Lamonia Deanne Brown is a Creative Executive and Film Festival Specialist. As founder of The Gilchrist Group LLC., she consults entertainment companies in the areas of content development, strategy and communications, and live events. She specializes in film festival production and programming, sponsorship management/activations, and content innovation.

Lamonia is the Festival Director for the Essence Film Festival, which launched in 2022 as part of the Essence Festival of Culture in New Orleans (after being delayed due to the COVID pandemic) with great success, high engagement, and impressive numbers. She continues to produce, lead, and grow the film festival with the goal of building the largest Black global film and arts gathering in the world.

Previously as a Consulting Content Strategist at WarnerMedia OneFifty (a Warner Bros. Discovery brand under the Corporate Social Responsibility department), Lamonia managed the content development and strategy, plus communications for a slate of 22 projects in the pre-development phase, as well as managing sponsorships and activations for over 40 identity-based film festivals that are supported by various entities in the company. As part of the CSR department, she was instrumental in recommending and securing corporate donations to arts & cultural organizations on behalf of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Lamonia currently serves as the co-chair of the Women of Color Caucus for the Writers Guild of America East, and on the board for the Washington D.C.-based Multicultural Media Correspondents Association.

Her television projects include the two unscripted series (THE RIGHT RECIPE and THAT WORD); and the scripted pilot BLACK ROSE, which won the NY Television Festival. She is also in pre-production on the documentary feature BLACK IVY and is finalizing the screenplay for her narrative feature WILLIE-B: WORKS IN PROGRESS, which peels back the cultural layers of a multidimensional love story set in the heart of Williamsburg, Brooklyn where she grew up and still lives.

Previous professional positions include Head of Programming & Production for the American Black Film Festival (ABFF); Director of Programming and Events at New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT); and freelance work with various festivals including the PGA’s Produced By: NY, the Hamptons Film Festival, LatinBeat, Montclair Film Festival, African American Women in Cinema, and others.

Lamonia attended Fordham University where she majored in Film, with a Creative Writing minor. She holds firm to the belief that all storytellers must be heard in order to create the paradigm shift necessary to bring about true equity.

She takes great interest in shepherding the career trajectory for Black people and women entering the film business by spearheading key pipeline opportunities including intern/mentor programs, student academies designed to provide access to corporate entertainment positions, training mid-career people in transition, and working on the development of indie creators’ projects.