RespectAbility Expands Entertainment Lab From Six Weeks to Five Months

RespectAbility’s Entertainment Lab for disabled professionals is making a big change for its sixth year.

Whereas the program had run for six weeks every summer even when it pivoted from in-person to virtual with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it is now expanding to five months. The change will allow the lab fellows more time in between sessions to process what they are learning, implement them in practice and work on their own projects before the next monthly lab workshop. As RespectAbility senior vp, entertainment and news media Lauren Appelbaum explains, the cadence of the lab’s part-time structure helps make it more accessible to people with certain types of disabilities, such as traumatic brain injuries.

“We first created this lab as a solution to the response that we would often receive from studios, producers and independent filmmakers who wanted to hire disabled writers, directors and others but claimed they ‘couldn’t find’ or ‘didn’t know’ anyone,” Appelbaum said in a statement, adding that there are now almost 200 lab alumni.

“As an alumna of the lab’s 2020 cohort, I am excited about the changes for the 2024 cohorts, which is a response to the changing climate of the entertainment industry and feedback from our rapidly growing alumni community,” RespectAbility senior associate of entertainment pipeline programming Lesley Hennen, who manages the lab’s day-to-day, said in a statement. “This year we will have the opportunity to welcome more than 50 disabled creatives into our pipeline programming.”

In addition to the virtual lab cohort, RespectAbility is also launching six new in-person mini-intensives focused on specific areas of entertainment this summer. Those participants will be announced later.
Amazon MGM Studios, Coverfly, Final Draft, the Golden Globe Foundation, the Harnisch Foundation, Murray/Reese Foundation, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures Entertainment, the Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Discovery are among the lab’s supporters.

The 2024 virtual cohort, who will stay together for five months, are based in cities across the United States as well as London, range in age from their 20s to their 60s and include people who have physical, cognitive, sensory, mental health and other disabilities:

Benjamin A. Friedman, Writer/Director
Cecilia Weiss, Producer
Chris Guerrero, Director
Coli B. Sylla, TV Writer
Colin Murphy, TV Writer
Dalila Ali Rajah, TV Writer
Dani Hanks, TV Writer
Derek Quick, Film Writer
Emma Layden, Film Writer
Faith Alabi, Writer/Director
Gayle Añonuevo, Post Production
Genevieve McDevitt, Film Writer
Howard Emanuel, TV Writer
Jacquelyn Revere, TV Writer
Jennifer Berry, Writer/Director
Johnny Bauers, TV Writer
Julia Ralenkotter, TV Writer
Maddy Ullman, TV Writer
Nancy Pickett, Director
Nandi Bowe, Writer/Director
Saleem Nasir Gondal, Director
Sophie Sagan-Gutherz, Film Writer
Stephen Nolly, Writer/Director
Toj Mora, Post Production
Tyler St. Pierre, Producer