Allissa V. Richardson, left, talks with Issa Rae, recipient of the USC Annenberg Charlotta Bass Journalism and Justice Lab’s fourth annual Media Trailblazer Award. (USC Photo/Steve Cohn)
Media entrepreneur Issa Rae honored with USC Charlotta Bass Lab Media Trailblazer Award
Rae told students to trust their gut instincts and recognize the value in their unique voices and perspectives.
In the era of ever-expanding artificial intelligence, Emmy-nominated producer, actress and entrepreneur Issa Rae still thinks writers’ rooms are the best place to come up with ideas.
“That human collaboration — I can’t replace having a conversation with someone and being able to gain inspiration from their lived, unique, ridiculous experiences,” Rae said to a capacity crowd at the Annenberg Auditorium in the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism building on the University Park Campus.
Earlier this month, USC students enjoyed an inspiring evening of laughs, storytelling and authentic advice with Rae, one of media and entertainment’s most influential voices.
The audience gathered to honor Rae with the USC Annenberg Charlotta Bass Journalism and Justice Lab’s fourth annual Media Trailblazer Award.
Rae first gained attention through her YouTube original series The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl (commonly referred to as Awkward Black Girl) and is best known for her critically acclaimed HBO television series Insecure, a comedy/drama that follows Black women as they navigate social and racial issues in South Los Angeles.
Bass Lab director and founder Allissa V. Richardson, associate professor at USC Annenberg, said Rae was a perfect candidate for the award because “she has fundamentally reshaped what it means to tell Black stories on our own terms.”
Richardson’s lab is named after pioneering civil rights activist, newspaper publisher-editor and educator Charlotta Bass, who shed light on issues affecting the Black community such as voting rights, labor and housing conditions, and police brutality at a time when there was little space for marginalized voices in mainstream media.
“In many ways, Issa’s work carries forth the legacy of Charlotta Bass herself, who believed in controlling our platforms and owning our own narratives,” Richardson said. “And like Bass, Issa has shown us that building institutions can be just as radical as breaking barriers.”
During her opening remarks, USC Annenberg Dean Willow Bay highlighted Rae’s dedication to creating and amplifying authentic portrayals of her L.A. community.
“Tonight, we honor a woman whose work makes room for joy and vulnerability, awkwardness and ambition, laughter and truth — a creator who tells stories about Black life, not as spectacle but interior, textured and deeply human,” Bay said.
Issa Rae: Falling in love with a blank page
Raised in L.A. by a French-instructor mother with a love for West African culture and a pediatrician father who ran a medical clinic in Inglewood, Rae grew up with a sense of pride in her Black roots and a desire to give back to her community. Rae shared how her parents’ decision to store a computer in her room provided a platform for the young writer’s burgeoning love of storytelling. “Seeing a blank page and the idea of filling it with my own stories just excited me,” Rae said.
She discussed how growing up on the internet “opened up her entire world” by providing early practice in crafting personas, role-playing and world-building. By the time she started putting content on YouTube and Facebook, “I felt like I had built real friends who were rooting for me and I had an automatic audience to showcase my work to when I did start creating a web series,” Rae said.
Despite pressure from her parents toward more traditional careers in medicine or law, Rae earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in African and African American studies from Stanford University. There she created Dorm Diaries, an early foray into the web series style of storytelling that shared her experiences as a Black college student.
Finding her voice
Rae said that authenticity comes down to trusting your voice, a strength she had to build when first posting content on the internet and on social media.
“The best thing was trying to write things online,” Rae said. “It’s one thing to make a joke in person … but there was something about not seeing the reaction, where it’s like I’m posting this because I think it’s funny. I’m cracking myself up; maybe somebody else will think this is funny, but I don’t have to care — it’s really for me.” Buzz from Black students at colleges across the country for Dorm Diaries confirmed to Rae something she likely already knew: She had a knack for telling stories about her community and a voice that was both funny and uniquely hers.
Issa Rae: Trusting your gut
By the time Awkward Black Girl and Insecure came around, Rae was confident in her style of humor.
Her main characters in both shows reflect her evolution from uncertain creator to creative powerhouse through Nicki Minaj-inspired mirror personas who alternately rap with outsize confidence and crumble under the weight of outside stress. “It just felt like the perfect device for this girl who wasn’t confident about her own voice and herself,” Rae said. “This is the only space that she felt safe, and she could literally talk to herself and pour life into herself and criticize herself in this private space in the sanctuary of her bathroom.”
Asked by USC Annenberg graduate student La’Shance Perry about what creative instinct she once ignored but now trusts, Rae said that she had to remind herself that people were hiring her because of her unique perspective and skill set — not because of her ability to mold herself according to their whims. “That changed the game for me,” Rae said. She stressed the importance of “remembering that you’re the only one who sees through your eyes and thinks the way you think,” and that being able to make that your “superpower” is essential.
A little help from Trojans
As an L.A. native who has built her career on telling stories set in the communities surrounding USC, Rae mentioned several major collaborations with alumni from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. During the event’s Q&A section, Rae shared that college friend Tracy Oliver, who helped her produce Awkward Black Girl, studied in the USC cinema school’s Peter Stark Producing Program. She credited Oliver, now a well-known screenwriter, producer, actress and director, with convincing her to treat the web series “like a real TV show” and bringing along classmates from the producing program who would eventually join as official crew for the series. “I will always appreciate her and the Peter Stark Producing Program for upping the production of Awkward Black Girl,” Rae said.
She also described USC film school alumnus and frequent collaborator Prentice Penny as “one of the best peer mentors that I’ve ever had,” one who encouraged her to remember that her vision was ultimately the core of her work.
Community and representation are key
The power of community was a recurring theme in Rae’s remarks.
“A key takeaway for me was that you have to have community to do the things you aspire to do,” said Abigail Lindo, a first-year master’s in public policy student at the USC Price School of Public Policy. “I’m in college, and my peers are going to be the next CEOs, the next leaders. They’re people that I want to have in my network because you never know what kind of rooms these people might be able to take you to.”
For Devontae Patterson, a USC Annenberg graduate student, the main message was the importance of trusting yourself. “You have to trust that your vision is the vision that people actually want to see,” Patterson said. “In all actuality, they’re expecting you to bring yourself and to bring you into the room all the time.”
Many student attendees related to Rae’s experience building the community of filmmakers she wished to see in the industry through her many collaborations and creation of Hoorae, a brand that unifies her film, television and digital ventures.
“It was really nice to hear her talk about not only her success under the bigger industry but also how she took that success and leveraged it to go independent and continue to tell the stories she wanted to tell while supporting other filmmakers,” said Demi Anais, a graduate student at the School of Cinematic Arts. “That’s something I want to do as well so it was empowering to hear someone who looks like me and does the things I hope to one day do achieve that level of community and success.”
Issa Rae: A star continues to rise
Rae won three NAACP Image Awards for her work on Insecure, in addition to many Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy nominations. She also executive produced HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show, the first sketch comedy show written by, directed by and starring a core team of Black women. In 2018 and 2022, she was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people. That same year, she executive produced Rap Sh*t, also for HBO, and soon after appeared in the 2023 blockbuster film Barbie. Two years later, she produced One of Them Days and is now working on the movie’s sequel.
Among those accomplishments, Rae has published a memoir, opened a coffee shop, collaborated and provided mentorship on a variety of television and film projects, and much more.
“[The Media Trailblazer Award] isn’t about popularity or perfection,” Bay noted. “It isn’t about playing it safe or waiting for permission. It’s about courage. It’s about craft. It’s about building lanes where none existed and then widening those lanes so others can walk through them.”
