Amber Ruffin became the first Black woman to write for a late-night network talk show when she joined the writing staff of Late Night with Seth Meyers. Now, she hosts her own late-night series, The Amber Ruffin Show on Peacock, which offers a mix of sketches and monologues on current events. Join us February 28 on ZOOM for a chance to learn from a trailblazing talent.
Presented with the Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
The Center's programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
AMBER RUFFIN, WRITER, PRODUCER & HOST, THE AMBER RUFFIN SHOW (PEACOCK)
Emmy- and WGA Award-nominee Amber Ruffin is a writer and performer for NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and was the first African-American female to write for a late-night network talk show in the U.S. She wrote and performed on Comedy Central’s Detroiters and was a regular narrator on the cabler’s Drunk History. Ruffin was previously a performer at Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, the iO Theater and the Second City in Chicago. In addition, she was a writer/performer for the 2018 and 2019 Golden Globe Awards and has written for the series A Black Lady Sketch Show. Ruffin is a New York Times bestselling author, along with her sister Lacey Lamar, of You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories of Racism, published by Grand Central Publishing. She is currently co-writing the Broadway musical Some Like It Hot, which will begin performances in 2022. Last year, Ruffin was named to the 2021 TIME100 Next List, TIME’s list of the next 100 most influential people in the world.
MODERATOR: RAESHEM NIJHON, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, CULTURE HOUSE
Raeshem Nijhon is the founder of Culture House, a Black-, Brown- and Women-owned production company where she and her partners, Carri Twigg and Nicole Galovski, produce entertainment forward work at the intersection of pop and politics.
Select current projects include premium doc-series for Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, OWN and YouTube and projects with Amazon, CNN, Freeform and AMC Studios in development.
Raeshem sits on the board for the Center for Communication, an organization dedicated to bringing more diversity to the media and entertainment industry, serving over 4500 students from 185+ colleges and universities annually. She serves on the Creative Council for EMILY'S List and is an active member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and the Dell Women’s Entrepreneurship Network.
Prior to founding Culture House she held multiple creative leadership positions including Executive Producer of Viacom’s MTV World where she produced Clio/Webby winning nonfiction series Rebel Music, about youth using art for change in conflict zones, and The Music Experiment, featuring artists like Of Monsters and Men, Santigold and Arcade Fire. Select pro-social work includes partnerships with Planned Parenthood, the National Council for Behavioral Health and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In 2020, Raeshem and her partners launched the Culture House Consultancy, a resource for films, series and multi platform projects to engage with a range of experts across issues like race, gender, mental health and socio-economic diversity that require nuance and knowledge when being addressed through entertainment and media.