When I look in the mirror I see the woman I knew I wanted to be as a child. When I was a young girl, I had a vision of the woman I wanted to be. And I often reached out to women of color in America for inspiration. My mother would regularly buy Essence and Ebony. I would look at those magazines filled with images of professional, intelligent women of color who knew who they were, who enjoyed who they were, and who were surrounded by other people who enjoyed who they were. When I look in the mirror, I'm really glad that that's what I see today, but it took awhile to get here.

As people of color, we're left out of history. History is sort of told around us. We're bystanders, we're passive, we're observers. We're never the center of our history.

The key quality all successful people share is the ability to inspire, to transfer our passion to other people and to bring them along with us in pursuit of our vision. I have to be able to inspire investors, actors and crews on a daily basis. What I recognize in other successful people is a similar ability to make their passion infectious.

When I look in the mirror I see the woman I knew I wanted to be as a child. When I was a young girl, I had a vision of the woman I wanted to be. And I often reached out to women of color in America for inspiration. My mother would regularly buy Essence and Ebony. I would look at those magazines filled with images of professional, intelligent women of color who knew who they were, who enjoyed who they were, and who were surrounded by other people who enjoyed who they were. When I look in the mirror, I'm really glad that that's what I see today, but it took awhile to get here.

People assume thoughts and processes about you that may have nothing to do with you whatsoever, but they make political assumptions and assertions about who you are based on your choice of partner.

Don't let a culture or society's rules define who you are; you define who you are.

What I hope is that this wider pattern of films about slavery that's emerging isn't just a fad but evidence that we've turned a corner as filmmakers of color and that we're moving forward in our confidence and in the film industry not being afraid of our telling these stories and in giving us the opportunity to bring our vision to the screen.