Teen Vogue: How does BGAC align with your personal passions?

Taylor Shaw: I'm passionate about changing, transforming representation in media, and showcasing underrepresented narratives across all the work that I do — as a producer, as a writer, as a host. I'm from Chicago, and that's why representation is so important to me, too, and partially why I went to journalism school. Being from Chicago, representation, and quality in that representation — honesty, reality, and perspective in that representation is immensely important to me because Chicago is a place that is not represented with integrity well. When you think about just the difference in perspective that's brought when you have black women behind the camera, when you have black characters being drawn, a lot of times what these cartoons will do if they have characters of color, they're not even voiced by people of color, they're voiced by white people. We want to change all of that.

TV: Does BGAC currently have anything exciting in the pipeline?

TS: Right now we're in the process of creating our pilot training and development program. Our collective members are invited to join that program, and then if they want to be represented by us as a talent agency, we help them get work. Our goal is to, one, help them get coveted jobs in the industry, and, two, build a community for them. That's where they fit in. We're training and developing, getting their skills up, honing them, and then our goal is to funnel them into these major animation studios and media companies.

For the talent agency, we represent them, and we produce work, animation, motion graphics for different clients. For our original content, we have that animated series that we're pitching. That's going really well. We actually have two animated series right now in our original content and the potential for a feature film, which is super exciting. We're talking with different animation studios about that, and then we're building relationships.

TV: Your initial Black Girl Animators Launch at Vice was such a huge success. Do you have any other events coming up?

TS: We're gonna have our first salon at Vice, and the tentative day right now is April 27. In this salon, we're gonna be showcasing the work of some of our women and also giving them the opportunity to present what they're working on individually and show off their skills. What I really want to do is get these women exposure. That's really a huge part of BGAC: getting [women] exposure and visibility. Black women in this industry are invisible. Black Girls Animate is designed to make them visible, but not only make them visible — get them work, get them jobs, and build a community for them.

TV: How do you see BGAC helping black women in their professions?

TS: In this industry, the way that black women tend to work is through freelance, and they're figuring everything out on their own. Which can be so stressful and time-consuming. What we want to do is just make it easier for the, give them a space to control their narrative, and give them a space to really have time to do their art and build community.

Black women in this industry are invisible. BGAC is designed to make them visible, but not only make them visible — get them work, get them jobs, and build a community for them.

TV: You mentioned that your youth membership is for ages 10–18. Do you have anything special coming up for them?

TS: This summer we're going to do girls' anime days in New York, Chicago, and L.A. I'm so excited about that because they are going be one-day workshops, but I'm also excited about that because it's the beginnings of our summer camp. With those days, our goal is to expose girls of color to the world of animation, to create a long trajectory of transforming what this industry looks like. This is really a career-development opportunity. We want girls of color to know that you can have a career as a professional artist. You can have a lucrative, successful, fun career as a professional artist, and we want these girls, we want to expose them to that.