The need to connect with diverse production talent hit home for ad agency Forsman & Bodenfors NY last year when it tried to assemble an all-female crew for a project but fell short.
After settling for a predominantly female team on that particular job, Forsman & Bodenfors didn’t settle for the status quo in the big picture. The agency proactively addressed the situation, investing $500,000 to develop and create what is now known as Grow Your Circle, a free digital tool that allows agencies and producers to find underrepresented talent in the U.S. from disciplines across all types of production including film, digital, and experiential. More importantly, it provides a point of access to many other underrepresented entrepreneurs and artisans, like those who identify as LGBTQ+, come from diverse backgrounds, or live with a disability.
Grow Your Circle was soft-launched at the 3% Movement Conference in November 2018. Since then, membership has snowballed with partners and talent including 3% Movement, ad agencies 72andSunny and Droga5, and production companies PRETTYBIRD, WAX, and Armada. Now Forsman & Bodenfors NY is officially unveiling the digital tool so it can be tapped into by the ad and production industries at large.
The platform, which can be accessed here, lets agencies and producers search for diverse artisans directly from the homepage, or they can browse companies and individuals in the Talent section. Filter menus help find the right talent based on expertise, location or category specialty. Talent goes beyond just directors and editors to also encompass animators, developers, musicologists and other professionals with varied expertise. The database is also searchable based on company certification–whether it’s a women-owned small business or a minority-owned company.
Grow Your Circle seeks to inspire the industry to recognize the power of its buying decisions, helps to fulfill the responsibility to address and minimize inequality across the production industry and as a result, create better work.
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More