About Inclusive Secret
Karen King-Chigbo is the first Black woman in Canada to produce a movie, & with a Cannes premiere. She's the first two time winner of the Canadian Academy’s award for diversity, & the winner of numerous awards working with diverse talent. Then clinical depression resulted from frustrations with diverse talent, white producers, sabotaging managers & micro aggressions.Karen King-Chigbo is not a diversity trainer working in scripted content. She is an award winning diversity content producer, training the industry based on her 25 years of experience off and on camera. Diversity has been the hallmark of Karen’s career. While many of the BIPOC talent she worked with served on boards of diversity organizations, they never understood the importance of hiring BIPOC, besides themselves, of course. King has seen the difference it makes to have BIPOC workers in various roles in the trenches of the film and TV industry.
INCLUSIVE SECRET is the culmination of her 25 year career of ups and downs working with BIPOC talent in various off camera roles. INCLUSIVE SECRET helps BIPOC scripted content workers access & embrace their cultural expertise. King shows the industry how to work with BIPOC to enhance the content, augment audiences and help end systemic racism at work.
Her illustrious career as a producer and production exec working for a-list public and private sector organizations saw her solely responsible for developing policy and initiatives to encourage the employment of racially diverse people on and off screen everywhere she worked – commercials, movies, docs and scripted series. Some roles were formal and some were informal, but Karen’s commitment and leadership remained steadfast. And it was not easy. In fact, sometimes it was impossible.
Lots of lip service, tokenism thwarting of efforts and all out backstabbing. Much of it done by other racialized people. The very people we are working so hard to help were the ones stabbing us in the back or in our chest. They didn’t really care. As long as they got what they wanted. Despite all the roadblocks, Karen persevered and excelled.
Achievements
First two time winner of the Academy’s diversity award. First Black woman in Canada to produce a movie. First Black woman in Canada to have a world premiere at the official Cannes Film Festival, Un Certain Regards. King is a seasoned veteran responsible for launching the careers of A-List BIPOC talent off screen. Commissioning scripted series like ”da kink in my hair” and “Shattered” with high percentages of diversity on and off screen. Most of the production companies struggled to hire more than one or two people of colour behind the scenes as though only white people had the right to work in the industry. The problem King sees is that white people are simply not equipped to do the best job serving today’s market.
Getting Certified
King knew that she faced a challenge to train everyone from executives to carpenters so she became certified as a trainer. She developed these online courses to help BIPOC people and their white colleagues understand the value of having BIPOC workers throughout the content creation process to serve the appetites of today’s diverse populations which are over 50% of all the major markets in North America.
Once certified by completing the Inclusive Secret Course, you will join the graduate community that will allow you to continue working in this collaborative way with others who understand the process. You will be able to move easily and effortlessly from one production to another with the the peace of mind that you are not going to say or do the wrong thing while working to engage today’s market.
Hiring is just the Beginning
If you want to serve the market, you have to hire the market, but that is just the beginning when dealing with a racialized market. You can easily hire a BIPOC team without getting any closer to serving your BIPOC audience. In fact, after a few years of watching content credits become more inclusive, King realized that the content itself had not changed as much as it could have if people actually understood how to work together for the greatest advantage.
The goal is to have every union member and non-union member in the industry from script to distribution learning this system of working together.
Racialized Responsibility
If we are the ones who want the change, it behooves us to make it happen. It is not something we can do alone. We all have to work together in the same way to ensure that the lies are replaced with stories that resonate with the audiences that have continuously been vilified in scripted content.
I created this process initially for the industry, and then I realized that I had to get BIPOC people trained as well because this is a whole new ball game. This is a new way of working that we all need to learn so that we can create a better world for future generations.
I am confident that the industry will embrace this process because we saw the world take to the streets when George Floyd was murdered. Content kills. We have trained the world to be afraid of Black men. We believed that they must have done something terribly wrong if they have been killed, especially by a cop.
Racialized lives are seen as disposable. Look at the difference between the world’s response to Rwanda’s genocide and the war in Ukraine.
We can change that from every job in the industry with this process. I know you will love it.