15 Nov Byron Allen, Eva Longoria and Barry Jenkins to Keynote Variety’s Annual Inclusion Summit

Storytellers, performers and industry leaders Barry Jenkins, Eva Longoria, Diego Luna, Byron Allen and George Schlatter will keynote Variety’s Inclusion Summit Nov. 15 at Four Seasons Beverly Hills. The daylong annual event brings together film, TV, and digital media industry innovators who are committed to inclusion, which goes beyond calls for diversity to consider how to most effectively galvanize a range of underrepresented voices and identities. Jenkins, the Oscar-winning director of “Moonlight” and the upcoming James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk,” says he feels a duty, as one of Hollywood’s most prominent black filmmakers, to participate in these industry-wide conversations. “

As someone who’s a very visible presence, it’s important to be out and present with these issues.” He knows these discussions are a way of demonstrating accountability. “It’s important to illustrate how we’re activating these things in our own lives and careers,” he adds. “I just presided over a small writers’ room for Amazon’s ‘The Underground Railroad,’ and the room was built with a fidelity to the material in mind. The protagonist of that show is a young black woman, so to have made that show with no women or black people in the room would have been heinous. I think we can all picture a vision of the industry, in a time not so long ago, when that might have been the case.”

The afternoon of the Inclusion Summit will feature a conversation between the audacious and outspoken Entertainment Studios CEO Allen and legendary producer Schlatter. A former comedian turned one of the world’s most prominent African-American media entrepreneurs (he recently purchased The Weather Channel) Allen has used all the tools at his disposal to make sure that the largest multichannel video programming distributors are committed to inclusivity. In fact, he has sued both Comcast and Charter over “economic inclusion” rights for people of color. “Diversity is more than a responsibility,” says Allen. “It’s simply smart business.”