Alum Spotlight
Meet this award-winning graduate in the entertainment industry.
After graduation from the University of Mississippi, Tina Mabry attended the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and earned an MFA in Film Production in 2005. Since 2007, she has been the CEO of Morgan’s Mark, an independent production company and editing facility.
Mabry is a writer and producer for Fox’s upcoming series, Proven Innocent. She co-produced, wrote, and directed the second season of USA’s hit drama Queen of The South. Mabry produced, wrote, and directed Own’s Queen Sugar created by Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey. She produced and directed Melody 1963:Love Hast To Win, an American Girl special for Amazon Kids that earned her a DGA Award and an NAACP Award. Her other television directing credits include Netflix’s Dear White People, ABC’s The Mayor, HBO’s Insecure, FX’s Pose, and STARZ’s Power.
Mabry began her career co-writing the feature screenplay Itty Bitty Titty Committee directed by Jamie Babbit. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2007 and won Best Feature Narrative at the South by Southwest Film and Music Festival. She wrote and directed her first feature film, Mississippi Damned, which garnered an impressive 13 awards in 15 film festivals including Best Feature Film and Best Screenplay at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2009. The film premiered on Showtime Networks in February 2011. She was chosen as one of “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in Filmmaker Magazine’s July 2009 issue.
Recognized by Out Magazine as one of the most inspirational and outstanding people of the year, Mabry was featured in the Advocate magazine as part of their Top 40 Under 40 feature of individuals raising the bar in their respective fields. In 2010, she was named the James Baldwin Fello in Media by United States Artists. Her feature script, Country Line, was accepted into FIND’s Screenwriters Lab and won the Creative Promise Award of Tribeca All Access in 2011. Mabry then participated in the Fox Writers Intensive in 2012, a highly selective writer’s initiative. She has participated in several talent development programs including Film Independent’s Writers’ Lab, Tribeca Film Institute’s All Access, and Sundance’s Screenwriters Intensive. In February 2013, Mabry was a fellow in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Intensive. Tina recently directed another film for the FUTURESTATES program, ANT, starring Guillermo Diaz (Scandal, Half Baked).
Listen to Mabry’s interview on the Creative Breakthrough podcast to discuss “How to Turn Rejection Into Success” (audio + transcript): https://funnybrowngirl.com/tina-mabry/