When director Jude Weng found out her first assigned “speed dating” partner at a breakfast set up by CBS’s diversity and inclusion office was Glenn Geller, the president of CBS Entertainment, she was “shaking in [her] boots.”



“You have such a brief moment to make an impression,” she told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview. The inaugural breakfast, which was held in mid-March, brought in 15 directors who were women and people of color — some through CBS’s diversity program and others hand-picked by those who run it — and paired them with CBS executives for seven-minute chats on rotation, with the goal of diversifying the director lineup of CBS and CW shows. During their allotted seven minutes, Geller told Weng that she should meet with several current programming executives about directing The CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

One meeting led to another meeting, which led to a meeting with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s showrunner, and then, Weng booked an episode for the show's upcoming second season. She went on to book jobs through the fall and winter, including episodes of Bravo's Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce and ABC's Black-ish, The Real O'Neals, and The Goldbergs. The CBS breakfast also led to jobs for five more of the 15 directors who attended, said Jeanne Mau, who runs CBS’s directing diversity initiative.

While that’s not enough to loosen the stranglehold white male directors have had on around 70% of TV episodes, for Weng, the breakfast was “a game-changer.” “I really love my agents at CAA, but these guys have absolutely done more for me and my directing career than my agents have,” she said of diversity departments. (She got her first break — on Fresh Off the Boat — after participating in the ABC/Disney program.)