since the pandemic began more than a quarter of a million people in entertainment have filed for unemployment hollywood production is coming back with film permit applications up 40 in los angeles but it's still a slow process tonight we meet an actor currently working during covet to talk about these changes it's good to have you here from los angeles this is klcs pbs welcome to everybody with angela williamson an innovation arts education and public affairs program everybody with angela williamson is made possible by viewers like you thank you and now your host dr angela williamson sean catherine kane it's so good to have you here tell us a little bit about yourself thank you it's nice to be here thank you for having me um well i grew up in staten island new york where a lot of my friends and family talk like this luckily i don't so i can travel in wider circles the then i studied um acting at nyu's tisch school of the arts and uh i studied with the atlantic theatre company acting school there got my bfa in drama and for some obscure reason was motivated to switch coasts to settle myself in los angeles but i do still spend my time between los angeles and new york where my family and i are very close was it difficult for you to move from new york to california to pursue your dream well i think it's always difficult to leave family when you're so tightly bound but luckily i've been able to visit a lot except for in the last several months but i usually go back about four times a year sometimes for as long as a month and get to spend time with my nieces and nephew so i make it work but yes of course i miss them a lot fortunately there have been a lot of opportunities that have softened the blow um some things that projects that i was able to participate in here community that i was able to find you know the phrase find your tribe i definitely was able to build that sort of foundation and those contacts in los angeles that i don't think i necessarily would have had access to in new york now you talked about finding your tribe now did this tribe help when you started to write and produce your own short films yes i think automatically you first lean on your friends and you lean on people that you've worked with already so just by getting getting myself out there meeting more people i was lucky enough to find representation pretty quickly and through meeting more people got recommendations to we'll take class here this is a really great venue for people who want to network and meet other creative minds um and so i started to meet pretty meet people pretty frequently and from there um admire certain talents and get cast in things and admire those people's talents and so when it came time for me to do the first one which was i had a lot of mistakes in it i just tapped people that i felt i could trust and that i wanted to work with and from there you you definitely like you have your hits and your misses but you you also learn so very much every single time you make an attempt so i've been able to build and build not only my projects but the the foundations of respect that engender future projects i want to talk about your acting in a minute but you talked about your film so let's talk about a little bit in detail and you talked about of course with filmmakers we all make mistakes we look at those but you did really well with this film so i want you to tell us a little bit about that film and tell us the exposure you got so i wrote safe a couple years ago and it was initially sparked by participating in a film festival collaboration uh film festival in which we as filmmakers all had to help each other and it was a two-week timeline you're given a quotation at the start a quote from whatever source you don't know what it's it's announced at the launch party and you're given two weeks to write film and you know casper cast post-production everything and then submit your film some of the films get chosen to screen some of the films win and uh i had had something on my mind for a while that i thought i would probably write write about but of course i needed the quote first and so quote helped me out i wrote i wound up writing the film i thought i was going to and i was fortunate that a director that i already knew was going to participate and trusted him and we put together a fantastic team that's one of those projects that i while of course we can always grow and be better that's one of those projects i think was a lightning in a bottle sort of moment things fell into place and i was really really fortunate with how it was received do you think safe was received because of the message and i want you to tell us a little bit about the message of the movie sure well i the safe deals with the the personal boundaries and personal safe space in the male female dynamic and how it's frequently how the the unspoken messages are frequently misidentified and misinterpreted by both sides but the person who is then in danger is the female and how navigating out of those situations is often as perplexing and damaging as the situations themselves what lasting effects you can have after a series of really truly negative borderline violent encounters and i was a very awkward kid and i didn't know what was going on i had not i was so lost but this boy started following me around the library and i got scared and i tried to tell someone and she was like oh it's cute he has a crush on you and i was like no i'm scared he won't leave me alone and he had a friend with him and then another friend so now i had three boys following me around the library and then they both um they all three of them uh all of a sudden admin or hugged me and like wouldn't let go and um my my babysitter was like still saying oh that's so cute they liked you but i felt so frightened and violated and this is the messaging that we get and i you know in in the grand scheme of things i wasn't physically harmed but it it does scar your psyche as far as what your boundaries are allowed to be and this film did phenomenal in the film festival circuit but it also too because you were the lead actress in the film it strengthening you as an actor and i'm sure it opened up more jobs because i want you to tell us about this phenomenal training you're getting right now right here in los angeles sure um well they say work begets work and so um a lot of the people that saw safe um asked me what i was working on next um i've stayed in contact one of the people that saw that film then cast me in another short film that did really really well it was a really beautiful film um and uh he and i i think are going to work again on my next my next trip so that one was his okay so you're still writing in producing your own films too while you're doing okay well definitely keep talking yes yes so he and i may hopefully if things go well in this in this sort of uncertain time hopefully we'll be filming in uh november december my next script which is called stay and it's that's the script that is currently making the rounds in some scripts competitions and it's moving into some rounds of really prestigious festivals that i didn't i was very surprised i got the letters and i was like oh that's amazing it's always a happy feeling yeah a happy feeling well in right now so you have a film in pre-production right now we're just going to say that's in pre-production right now positive thoughts and a few weeks ago you spent some time back on the set on a new movie and so how was that for you as an actress but you also have producer filmmaker writer in the background but how is that for you yes well i keep those two parts of the brain very separate when on set um on the days that i'm acting it's it's only acting which is why it's really important to have a really strong team that you trust around you like the director is doing the directoring job the producers are doing the producing job on that day i'm not doing any of that can't do it i tried but um so i on this last production uh i was just an actor just went on uh it was at the start of the day sort of fact-finding about what the precautions would be like research for my upcoming project they were very very careful to maintain social distancing and masks and have a skeleton crew only essential people towards the latter part of the day of course as you're racing to get the shots some of those social distancing strictures get a little relaxed but um the testing was required and masks and the everybody was as careful as they possibly could be and it got shot got done so that was relief so tell us you talked a little bit about yourself as an actress tell us about how you will approach producing stay with the current pandemic well i would love for obviously to be coveted complying completely for uh for stay and i will have to do a little bit more research on that and what the permitting is and what the what resources are needed because i was i was the recipient of it before with my producing partner and i hope my hope is that we can continue to have productions come back and start filming again i'm looking at another job coming up where they're being very coveted compliant very careful everybody gets tested every morning and you get the quick test before you walk in so i'm hoping that we are able to slowly and safely um recreate the robust production environment and community that we had before that that's the ultimate goal um if not more so maybe this will spark new creative stories that frequently come out of times of turmoil and trouble um i mean without sounding like a nerd like the chronicles of narnia came out of world war ii so who knows what what massive expression or outpouring of expression could come from what we're going through now especially as many of us have been with our own thoughts more so than in the past tell us a little bit your hope for the future of hollywood as an actress or as a filmmaker even if you want to talk about both that's good too well my primary hope is that we can return to work safely with hopefully no no instances of new coveted cases because our precautions are effective and if we accomplish that then i hope that production will continue to grow and and become as robust and rich as it was um in the past with new series starting perhaps inspired by what's been going on now and as an actor particularly i would love for the shared intimacy of of that screen time and that shared expression when you feel like you and your scene partner are the only two people in the world but that's sort of impossible when you're six feet apart so i would love that to return thank you so much for everything that you are doing not only as a filmmaker but as an actress and also just shedding some light today on production that's happening during covid right now best of luck to you and i can't wait to see you again on the big screen where's tommy i thought he was with you no jack tommy oh [Music] don't stop keep playing here we go here's the fun part encouragement pass it on from the foundation for a better life [Music] wealth is a major indicator of economic inequality millions of families nationwide lack resources necessary to secure their financial futures tonight we discuss wealth equality across various racial and ethnic groups sergio tell me a little bit about where you come from because your background is what makes you sergio today sure so i want to go all the way back if you don't mind not at all so five generations ago in mexico i had an ancestor a great-great-grandfather who was a wastico indigenous man okay and he became a physician and he became the physician of the what became the president of mexico who who could also be called a dictator because he he ran his term for 30 years and and he became a very important person in mexico and so what you see in me is actually the falling dagger of that family line right and so i had a whole series of of individuals in my family that were very very successful very very important to a nation right and then when i was brought to this country at the age of three i lost all of that social capital right and i grew up sort of in in orange county as a middle class privileged but nowhere near the level of privilege that i would have had had i stayed in mexico city and and the reason why i'm telling you all this is because it's an important dynamic that is is actually very unique typically when people talk about mexican immigration they don't see somebody who's who's falling in social capital they see somebody who is adopted what would be the american dream and they think that they're going to go from the lowest of the possible social cass if you will to something like middle class or beyond right and so um i think it's important for me to to come from that point of privilege and to say there's actually another path because you would all do it backwards yes that's right and it's an important thing today because um i don't think for example and this is uh many many generations later i don't think i'll be as successful as my father was even and i know i'll definitely not be as successful as my great great grandfather right and so that's sort of a dynamic that has led to why i do the work that i do is because i've sort of always felt uncomfortable in the united states from an immigrant perspective and also with you would have to get into the dynamics of orange county and what it's like to be a mexican in orange county and what it's like to be a such a unique mexican like i have been and your background is as a venture capitalist and we're going to talk about what you're doing now but your background's so important to what you're doing today so tell us a little bit about that so my background is as a banker and um i've been working in venture capital for the last seven years and venture capital is is actually a pretty significantly large industry and the the part of it that i've been working on is what they call angel funding and tell me about this angel funding and the reason why you think that there's inequality today i'm not going to use the right words but it's like a governing body for all angel capital in the united states okay it's called the angel capital association and so what they do is they take all of these groups of angel investors and those investors provide data back to the angel capital association and they release it to the public as something that's called the halo report and so just to give you an idea of the state of angel funding in the united states when that data comes back there's essentially four categories for individuals that are represented the first is the white male the second is the non-white male the third is the white female and the fourth is the non-white female so there is nothing of like if you're black if you're latina if you're asian you get lumped into a non-white female category okay and roughly if you were to take all of 100 of angel fundings that happen in the united states that non-white female is getting less than three percent of of that 100 and so then if you drill down into my specialty which is latinos or latinas they don't even get to a fraction of one percent of the of the angel fundings that are successful in a given year but it's important to know that that's a reality but nobody's even counting you do not get accounted for as a latina or as a black female you just go into the non-white category so they have one category for a large group of people and then based on that category which is really small only a small even a smaller percentage gets that capital so what can what have you been trying to do to help widen that gap and i'm not putting you on the spot but i'm sure you have been doing something i i've been failing i've been struggling right so um typically what what i have seen in my seven years in doing this is uh white males come through the door with resources and with all of the things necessary to have their startups be funded we don't typically see anything other than that and so does that lead to why you are doing the non-profit work that you're doing today so to a certain extent so the work that i'm doing in the non-profit world today is tied to not to entrepreneurship the way that the venture capital industry sees it they call it social enterprise in the nonprofit world and it's how would you if you're an undocumented mother living in south los angeles with all of the obstacles that you have in front of you to earn a living how are you going to do it and so that's what this work is about and so what have you done to make sure that people get over these barriers so it's not so much about me i know that it should be about me but i followed a an executive that that i am respect a lot her name is dr michelle burton and she brought me into this very storied non-profit in south los angeles that's called community health councils community health councils was established during the the last uprising in 1992 as a part of a an effort that was called rebuild to la and so community health councils has a division that's called the social change institute and they produce a capacity building workshop that's called leading for equity and so i was brought into leading for equity to be somebody who could facilitate that capacity building for this particular audience of mostly women right now what we see in in the workshops that we've done to date it's been about 80 percent our our latinas and about 20 are about elder black women and so that's been the makeup of of this particular community in south los angeles and so this is very personalized and you actually have to meet with each one of these candidates individually to come up with their stories absolutely how difficult is that especially with the amount of people that you're servicing right now so that that is actually one of the big problems um right now we have about 50 participants in in the workshop and and i actually tap my network from from other industries to support them um but yeah so by our calculations the research that we've done at community health councils i estimate that there's about 250 000 of this particular type of person that could use that capacity building we do get support i think where the non-profit world is is very complicated is that usually they're funding programs and they're usually funding them at short term and so what what needs to happen at some point as as you begin to show impact is you need to get multi-year funding and you need to have more funders if you will so a common problem in the nonprofit world is funding yes definitely understand that and i want to talk a little bit about your source material because that was one of the major things that i was so impressed with so tell us a little bit about that and tell us how you use that and you can even tell us how you developed it sure so um i gave you an idea of of what the workshop looks like in terms of the individual identities right typically what ends up happening at least in my world especially in the world of venture capital but this applies to almost every industry including the media industry which is that when you go to provide source material to those individuals it's usually coming from the same place and that same place is usually written by an adult white male typically that the best that you can hope for is an adult white male from harvard like that is the the creme de la creme of source material and so what does end up happening a lot is that somebody will bring something in from the harvard business review and they'll try to apply it at the street level with these types of individuals and so that's the first thing that i saw is that the source material that i was given does not apply to the types of individuals that i'm working with and so what i really wanted to do was to create that source material so that the individual that i'm working with can see themselves in the source material you have given us so much information sergio people are watching right now and they want to know how they can get in contact with you to help you continue your service in the community so can you give us a little information about that sure so once again the organization that i'm doing this for is called community health councils they have a website it's chc hyphen inc.org and there's a section on the website for the social change institute and then there's a call out what we call it for this particular program that's called leading for equity and you mentioned that you have funders and people volunteering but there's more that can always be needed right absolutely and i think one of the things that i wanted to try to express is that even if you get a program funded like let's say you have a program that's for 50 individuals you can get that program funded like it's still hard but it's it's possible what there is no funding for is for going from 50 to 250 000 right the scale of something that that doesn't provide a return on investment that that like an investor would be able to calculate right and so you know one thing is you know struggling to get the funding for a specific program and another thing is is struggling to get the funding for the scale of that particular program and so it sounds like what you're trying to do is really bridge a gap with who's the writer versus who is the audience that's right excellent oh sergio thank you so much for your time and telling us a little bit about your background and how it's led you to be this champion and that's what i consider you right now a champion for people bringing equity to all humankind so thank you so much for your time tonight for sure and thank you for joining us on everybody with angela williamson it's viewers like you that make this show possible stay in touch with us on social media good night and stay well [Music] you