Iyabo Boyd Founder & Director, Brown Girls Doc Mafia

Iyabo Boyd is the founder and director of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, whose mission is to bolster the creative and professional success of women and non-binary people of color working in the documentary industry, and to challenge the often marginalizing norms of the documentary field.

Iyabo is also an award-winning filmmaker who strives to tell stories from under-explored perspectives, to reflect the dynamic humanity of women and people of color. Her latest short Me Time is a black feminist comedy about masturbation, which has played over 20 festivals nationwide, winning 9 awards. She was a fellow in Sundance’s 2019 Talent Forum and their 2018 Screenwriting Intensive, and was awarded a 2019 SFFILM Rainin Screenwriting Grant for her first first feature screenplay, Kayla & Eddie En Français, about an estranged Black father and daughter reconnecting in Paris.

As a producer, Iyabo was a Sundance Creative Producers Fellow and an Impact Partners Creative Producers Fellow in 2016, for the feature documentary For Akheem, about a teenage black girl coming of age in St. Louis just after Ferguson, which premiered at the Berlin International and Tribeca Film Festivals. As a film industry professional, Iyabo has held positions in artist development, program management, and funding at the Points North Institute, First Look Media’s Topic.com, Kickstarter, Doc Society’s Good Pitch, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Tribeca Film Institute, and IFP.

Originally from Denver, Iyabo graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for Film & Television, and currently resides in the Bronx, NY.