“I think in every aspect of my life, it has been about helping folks create their narrative,” Jenean Glover says. 

The entrepreneur and USC Iovine and Young Academy alumna has a robust career that spans decades and varied positions, and although she’s had a noteworthy impact on the entertainment industry, she’s still writing her own evolving story.

Glover is the executive director of The Blackhouse Foundation, a nonprofit aimed at cultivating and promoting possibilities for the Black community in entertainment. The organization got its start at The Sundance Film Festival in 2006, designed as a safe and welcoming space where creatives and executives of color could come together to create, connect, and participate in stimulating discussions. Blackhouse’s mission is close to her heart and her personal intent to amplify diverse voices and magnify projects that deserve to be seen and heard. Glover was appointed to the position in 2021. She devotes her time and passion to empowering underrepresented creators and advocating for inclusive storytelling, programming, and representation in top-level leadership.

Glover earned her Master of Science in Integrated Design, Business and Technology in 2020,  but when she entered IYA, she had already hit professional milestones that could surpass three lifetimes. After an engineering role at a Silicon Valley startup, she worked her way up from the famed William Morris Endeavor mailroom to become a talent agent in a successful career trajectory that led her to become a business owner of a talent management and content creation firm. Lack of representation was a common thread woven amongst the tapestry of this multifaceted career. She continues to work to change that circumstance today.

“I was always enamored with the [entertainment] business, just like engineering. There weren't a lot of folks that looked like me. A young African American woman in engineering, there weren't a lot of us. As an agent, not a lot of Black agents, not a lot of women of color. So I was always in a position where there weren't a lot of us. The visibility thing was always important,” she explains. 

As part of Blackhouse’s development, Glover is making sure the “Black media ecosystem” thrives, whether it’s through talent representation, thought-leader panels, executive pipelines, or resources that extend outside the festival circuit. She admits that Hollywood is a tough place to navigate and she’s committed to fostering partnerships and strategies that encourage that visibility she’s been searching for all her life. 

“We are creating an opportunity and making sure that Black folks, in particular people of color, have that access on all platforms … Now we want to tell stories,” she says of Blackhouse’s growth beyond cinema. 

Glover calls herself a problem-solver and lifelong learner, and her employment and academic history truly reflects that description. 

With potential aspirations of making movies on the special effects side, she ended up at USC at the Marshall School of Business studying entertainment business. But one USC graduate degree wasn’t enough. IYA came at the turning point in her career and her personal journey in 2018. She was able to raise her twins at home while deep-diving into new pathways for innovation and refining abilities poised to elevate her to the next professional echelon. Even for someone as accomplished as Glover, there was more to discover. 

Glover expresses gratitude to IYA for disrupting her notion of typical schooling and allowing her to engage in real-world residentials and roles that broadened her human-centered design horizons. She took on opportunities at Morgan Stanley and Deloitte, engaged in Hackathons, worked with The American Heart Association in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, and even conducted tech research in Estonia. The immersive learning environment was “game-changing” for her intersectional perspective.  

“We were able to work collaboratively with some international colleagues on design thinking, agile learning and all of these things that aren't the traditional things you learn in business school,” she recalls.

“I think what it [IYA] did is, it branded me as someone that knows how to innovate, reinvigorate, and re-innovate my own career, but also in general,” Glover adds. 

Call it reinvigoration or re-innovation, but three years after graduation, Glover is more inspired than ever to produce with purpose. As the seven-year president of the board of trustees at the North LA County Regional Center where she oversaw case management for clients with developmental disabilities, the contribution of her community support endures. It’s assignments like this and Blackhouse that fulfill her desire to give back and ignite positive change. 

“If we're smart about using our time wisely and we connect to the right stories and we see the right pieces of inspiration, it can change the game for someone else too. And that's the narrative I want to create. If you want to talk about your legacy and what you're leaving, ‘how did that help you tell your story’ is what I would love to do,” she says of her dreams for what lies ahead. 

As far as legacies go, Glover is well on her way to solidifying hers as someone who adapted and progressed in an effort to boost the prosperity of others. She’s taken on the roles of mother, creator, business owner, student, executive director, and more. The rest is yet unwritten history.

Glover devotes her time and passion to empowering underrepresented creators and advocating for inclusive storytelling, programming, and representation in top-level leadership.

As a Nonprofit Executive Director, Graduate Alum Amplifies Black Voices In Entertainment