Pop Culture, Gender Roles & Responsibility To Audience

Mildred Okwo is a respected Nigerian film Director and Producer whose films have been nominated and won several prestigious awards including AMVCA, AMAA, NMA and “Publix du Prix” at Nollywood Paris.

A former Los Angeles litigation lawyer, her film “The Meeting” was one of the top box-office draws of 2012 and set a quality standard for new Nollywood films in the country. Mildred shot her first film 30 Days in 2005. The film received 9 AMAA nominations.

In 2016, Okwo was named one of “50 Women Shaping Africa” by influential international women’s magazine Elle Magazine and 100 Most influential people in Nigeria by Y’Naija.com. She is a founding member of the Nigerian Oscar Selection committee and was recently featured in a BBC documentary about female Film Directors in Nigeria.

Okwo has served as jury member for 2020 Aswan Women’s International Film Festival, Africa Movie Viewers Choice Awards (AMVCA) Africa International Film festival (AFRIFF) and Golden Movie Africa Awards.

Mildred’s has currently finished filming her 4 feature film Project “La Femme Anjola”, a neo noir film with an African twist. The film is set in Lagos and Cape town and stars Rita Dominic, Mumbi Maina and Nonso Bassey.

Trailer for La Femme Anjola https://www.youtube.com/watch v=XFUtwbjTxb8&authuser=0

Ngoc oversees all entertainment strategy, talent relations, and entertainment industry programming for TIME’S UP. With a background that spans across entertainment, sports, and philanthropy, Ngoc is a strategist who uniquely merges expertise as a publicist and experience as an independent producer, to impact culture through creative storytelling. Ngoc worked for over a decade in publicity at Miramax Films, Creative Artists Agency, and Paramount Pictures in addition to TEDx, US Open, XPRIZE, Bad Robot, and Google. As an independent filmmaker, Ngoc produces film, television, and online content that champions women-focused narratives.

Busola Dakolo (Nee Amupitan) is a Nigerian professional photographer and content creator. An alumnus of the New York Film Academy, Busola started her photography career by harnessing the power and flexibility of online learning whilst working as a freelance consultant for Information Technology (IT) companies.

Now the CEO of Busola Dakolo Images, a photography studio, where she specialises in Personal Branding Photography and social impact photos, Busola honed her skills early on by taking countless pictures of her children. Busola is committed to consistently producing compelling images and executing expressive visual digital storytelling projects and enjoys working with a team of young photographers and visual artists to capture memorable moments for her clients.

Busola is passionate about learning and helping young people all over the world gain access to global opportunities. In line with this mission, she founded SkillsKitchen.com, an online skills acquisition and development platform in 2019. SkillsKitchen has attracted over 5,000 registered participants within the first two years, more than 3,000 of whom are very active on the platform.

Busola is also a firm believer in gender equality and has lent her voice to various campaigns with various organisations — including the European Union, to help victims of domestic and sexual violence access care, counselling and other relevant support. She was named in This Day newspaper’s Game Changers of 2019 list in recognition of her social impact efforts.

Busola started her career in 2005 at Zenith bank where she worked with the e-Business team to deliver strategic business solutions for several companies across industries by driving more efficient business processes and revenue growth. Busola also developed good administrative skills while she worked as the Personal Assistant to the CEO of The West Group Limited, an oil and gas servicing company in Lagos, Nigeria.

Busola holds a bachelor’s degree in Geology and Mineral Resources from the University of Ilorin, Nigeria and has earned a Diploma in Photography from the New York Film Academy, USA.

Busola currently lives in Lagos, Nigeria.

Dr. Giti Chandra is Senior Researcher and Lecturer with the Gender Equality Studies and Training (GEST) programme, part of the GRO Centre under the auspices of UNESCO, at the University of Iceland. She has been Associate Professor at the Dept. of English, St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and has taught in and been a fellow at Rutgers University, New Jersey, from where she did her Doctoral work on Women and Violence.

She is the author of Narrating Violence, Constructing Collective Identities: To witness these wrongs unspeakable (Macmillan UK/US: 2009) and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook on The Politics of the #MeToo Movement (Routledge UK/Nov 2020). She is the recipient of an EDDA grant for a book length study titled In Visible Texts: Hidden and Spectacularised Violence in Colonial India and Africa (forthcoming). Dr Chandra has served as Chairperson of the College Complaints Committee Against Sexual Harassment in St Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, and as the External Expert on the Sexual Harassment Complaints Committee at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication. Dr Chandra has published a variety of fiction: the third book of The Book of Guardians Trilogy, The Eye of the Archer, is due out with Hachette in August 2020 (books 1 and 2 are The Fang of Summoning: Hachette 2010, and The Bones of Stars: Hachette 2013), and her short stories have been published in the Gollanzs Book of South Asian Science Fiction, vol. 1 and 2, and Future Fictions; her poems have been published in various anthologies and journals.

She has served as Conductor of the St Stephen’s College Choir and the Capital City Minstrels, spanning almost two decades, and was violinist with the Delhi Symphony Orchestra for many years. She has also worked as Director of theatre poetry productions with Yatrik.