Master Class: Breaking into the Industry as a TV Writer with Rae Benjamin (THE WITCHER), Diane Ademu-John (EMPIRE), Janet Lin (BRIDGERTON) and Jelani Johnson (EVP of Macro) | Presented by In the Cut

Rae Benjamin is a TV/film writer and LA native. Her mother encouraged her writing from a young age and compiled booklets of her short stories to hand out as Christmas gifts each year…this was either super cute or super cheap, depending on which relative you ask. She finds humor in awkward, uncomfortable situations. Things that might not seem funny at first, things you maybe shouldn’t laugh at... and ultimately, things that have the power to broaden perspectives and empathy. Rae was most recently a Staff Writer on season 3 of THE WITCHER (Netflix) and also served as co-writer and co-executive producer for an upcoming anime feature. Her animated comedy series is currently in development with Topic Studios. Rae is also the founder of In the Cut, an organization dedicated to making the industry more accessible to Black creatives and other people of color. 

Diane has been writing very grisly tales for a very long time, working for over a decade on morgue-based crime dramas like CROSSING JORDAN (NBC) and BODY OF PROOF (ABC), then jumping to the supernatural realm with MEDIUM (CBS) for five seasons. More than anything, she loves telling tales of really disturbed families who kill or die for one another, be they the world’s oldest vampires (THE ORIGINALS on the CW) or Chicago drug-dealers-turned-music-moguls (EMPIRE on FOX). Most recently, Diane served as Executive Producer on THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR for NETFLIX, and consulting producer on the upcoming horror comedy THE AUTEUR from Taika Waititi. She is currently co-showrunning an upcoming sci-fi project for HBOMax.  

Janet Lin grew up in Southern California, but left the west coast to go to Amherst College. She lived in NYC for several years, riding the internet wave at the turn of the millennium. Soon after 9/11, while reconsidering life, she moved back to LA to attend USC Film School. She slipped directly into television work, writing on shows such as Bones, The Night Shift, Forever, Orville, Cursed and Bridgerton. She’s written pilots for USA, TNT, HBO Max and Netflix and she's recently segued into feature work. She lives with her husband and two boys in Mar Vista and she is fantastically tall for an Asian woman.

Jelani Johnson serves as MACRO’s EVP of Content Strategy and Senior Partner at M88. Most recently, Johnson spent 4+ years as a Motion Picture Agent at the Creative Artists Agency (CAA). While at CAA his clients included: Melina Matsoukas, A$AP Rocky, Cheo Coker, Jesse Williams, Lenny Kravitz, Storm Reid, Angel Soto, Solvan “Slick” Naim, Gina Rodriguez, Virgil Williams, Mara Brock Akil and André Holland amongst others. Johnson began his career in entertainment as an intern at CAA and transitioned into talent management at the Santa Monica-based management company Generate. He subsequently co-founded The Mission Entertainment, a management and production company focused on multicultural content creators, before returning back to CAA. Johnson received a bachelor’s degree in History and Anthropology from Columbia University