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Tonya Lewis Lee
Producer, Writer, Entrepreneur & Women’s Health Advocate
Tonya Lewis Lee
Producer, Writer, Entrepreneur & Women’s Health Advocate
Biography
Producer, writer, entrepreneur and women’s health advocate Tonya Lewis Lee has spent over twenty years delivering quality content across multiple platforms. As a television producer, Lee served as Executive Producer on the episodic series She’s Gotta Have It, streaming on Netflix. She produced her first limited series at Nickelodeon, Miracle’s Boys, based on the Jacqueline Woodson novel of the same name, which remains classic television today.
As a film producer, Lee produced the adaptation of the Walter Dean Myers novel, Monster, which premiered in competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and is now available on Netflix. Most recently Lee co-directed and co-produced Aftershock, which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and examines the U.S. maternal mortality crisis. It won the Special Jury Award for Impact for Change and was acquired by Onyx and ABC News to stream on Hulu.
As a writer, Tonya penned the script for The Watsons go to Birmingham, an adaptation of the Christopher Paul Curtis novel that she also produced for the Hallmark Channel. In addition, Tonya is the author of three children’s books, including the classic Please Baby Please, and the adult novel, Gotham Diaries.
In 2007, Tonya became the spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health’s infant mortality awareness-raising campaign, A Healthy Baby Begins with You, which ignited her lifelong passion of advocating for better health outcomes for all women in the United States, especially women of color. Through the campaign, Tonya produced the film, Crisis in the Crib; Saving our Nation’s Babies. This work led Tonya to embark on her journey as an entrepreneur to create Movita Organics, an organic vitamin supplement brand to continue the conversation with women about accessing healthy outcomes and to provide them with a quality tool to aid in their quest.
Tonya is a member of the Writers Guild of America and a member of the Producer’s Guild of America, serving as co-chair of the One Guild Committee and on the Producer’s Council Board of Delegates. She is member of the board of trustees of the March of Dimes and is a director emeritus of the board of trustees of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She is the mother of two adult children and lives in New York City with her husband, Spike Lee. Indiewire named Tonya as one of 22 rising female filmmakers to watch in 2022.
Speaker Videos
Impact of Mentoring and Youth Support
Speech Topics
Health: Closing the Gap on Health Disparities in the United States
Through her work with the Office of Minority Health, Tonya Lewis Lee has spoken across the country about reducing US infant mortality rates, specifically focusing on the disparity between the rates at which black babies die versus white babies – a two to one ratio. Lewis Lee discusses raising awareness around the issue of health disparities in the United States. She explores such questions as: What are the causes? What can we do to bring down these staggering rates?
Creativity: Trusting In the Creative Process
Tonya Lewis Lee left a legal career and went on to become a television producer, co-author of several children’s books, and author of an adult novel. Making the transition from a standard practice to embracing a full, fun, creative life can be scary but it has its rewards. Lewis Lee will share her guiding principles, her “up” moments and her “down” moments, as she made her own transition and continues to push the boundaries.
Activism: Showing Up Is the First Step
When called upon by the Office of Minority Health (OMH) in 2007, Tonya Lewis Lee took that first step toward raising awareness on an issue that became a passion for her and the team of people she worked with. Through a Pre-conception Peer Education Training program, Lewis Lee and OMH have fueled a movement about winning back the civil right to a healthy life. In this discussion she talks about how she and OMH set out to create a program for college students nationwide, sharing the importance of making healthy lifestyle choices for their own sake and for the sake of future generations.
I Sit Where I Want: The Legacy of Brown v. the Board of Education
In the presentation of the documentary film I Sit Where I Want, Tonya Lewis Lee discusses the process of engaging Buffalo, New York, high school students in a conversation about race, segregation, integration, and what it all means to their lives. Through the eyes of nearly a dozen students of different ethnic backgrounds, the film takes a journey to understand why these kids at a racially mixed school segregate at lunchtime in the cafeteria. It is the age-old question: Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? At first glance the answers may seem simple, but as we get to know the students and their environments we come to realize that the issues of why people choose to self segregate can be more complex than we initially thought. Whatever the reasons, the world is a better place if we face our fears, mix it up and try something new. The students in the film come away from their experience understanding the importance of becoming aware of their actions and with a feeling that cross-cultural exchange makes for a better, more productive world.
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