Ava DuVernay

Ava Marie DuVernay is an African-American award-winning director, producer, writer, marketer, and film distributor who was born on August 24, 1972 in Long Beach, California, USA. She is the director of Wings of Fire (TV show), though she also directed A Wrinkle in Time, Central Park Five, Selma, Half the Picture, and many other films. She graduated from Saint Joseph High School in Lakewood, California, and became a double BA major in English literature and African-American studies at the Univeristy of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). DuVernay currently resides in Long Beach.

You can visit her IMDb, website, Twitter, Facebook, as well as Instagram here.

Education and Careers

Careers

Despite her success in the film and television sectors, DuVernay didn't start using a camera until she was 32 years old. An internship with CBS News had a big impact on DuVernay's decision to pursue journalism as her first passion. Her task was to assist with reporting on the O.J. Simpson murder trial. However, DuVernay lost interest in journalism and made the decision to enter the field of public relations. She began by working as a junior publicist at 20th Century Fox, Savoy Pictures, and a few other PR firms. In 1999, she established The DuVernay Agency, often known as DVAPR, as her own public relations business.

She worked on marketing campaigns for films and television programs such Lumumba, Spy Kids, Shrek 2, The Terminal, Collateral, and Dreamgirls through her company, DVAPR, which offers marketing and PR services to the entertainment and lifestyle industries.

Among DuVernay's other projects is the Urban Beauty Collective, a marketing network that debuted in 2003 and by 2008 had grown to include 20 U.S. cities and more than 10,000 African-American beauty and barbershops. They received free mailers from Urban Eye, a daily two-minute celebrity and entertainment news show distributed to radio stations, HelloBeautiful, a digital platform for millennial women of color, and UBC-TV, a free monthly Access Hollywood-style promotion program.

Education

She would go to her stepfather's childhood home, which wasn't too far from Selma, Alabama, during her summer breaks. Due to the fact that her father had observed the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, DuVernay claimed that these summers had an impact on the creation of Selma.

DuVernay attended Saint Joseph High School in Lakewood and graduated in 1990. She was raised a Catholic. She pursued a dual BA at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in English literature and African-American studies. The sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha welcomes Ava as an honorary member. fr:Ava DuVernay