98 EMMY
YVETTE NICOLE
BROWN
PROFESSION: An actress, her
credits include Community,
a recurring role on Mom,
Avengers: Endgame and the
upcoming Disney+ live-action
Lady and the Tramp.HOW SHE GOT INVOLVED: “It’s been eight years
now. A publicist knew I was looking for a way to
give back and said, ‘Have you heard of MPTF? You
have to go. You’ll fall in love.’ I see our elders as a
gift, with their legacy of wisdom. When the NextGen
Board was conceived about four years ago, I was
the first one on it, along with the founders and
cochairs, Natalie Bruss and Brian Toombs.”
HANDS-ON HELP: “I find the best thing is giving
time. For example, an elderly actress needed
disability accommodations at her home. I was part
of the team that, through the Home Safe Home
program, rearranged things for her and lowered
shelves in her closet to make them easier to get
to. We rearranged her kitchen and also dug a
trench for a ramp at the entrance to her home.
“Before the holidays, we got cushions as gifts
for the MPTF residents, and I coordinated the gift
wrapping with eighty collaborators. We gave out
the presents on Christmas Day.”
FUNDRAISING FUN: “I love doing game shows
— that way, I can give MPTF $10,000 at a time. I
also get the ball rolling at charity events. I walk up
to the bar and give a call to action. It’s my acting
chutzpah.”
PERSONAL IMPACT: “When you’ve been blessed,
it’s important to give back. And volunteering for
MPTF has helped me make better decisions: save
your money, but don’t be afraid to take risks.
You’ve got to live.”GEOFFREY COLO
PROFESSION: As a
transmedia producer
at Marvel Television, he
produces content on various
platforms to build viewership
for Marvel shows, working
with showrunners, talent and
the marketing, publicity and social media teams. He’s
a 2017 Emmy nominee as an executive producer
of the short-form digital series Marvel’s Agents of
S.H.I.E.L.D.: Slingshot.HOW HE GOT INVOLVED: “I’d been searching for
something for a while as a way to give back. Then
[former Nashville colleague and NextGen Board
member] Monica Macer brought me out to the
campus, and it was an instant match.”
BOARD DUTIES: “I’m a cochair of the social media
committee and I’m on the fundraising committee.
And like a number of the NextGen Board members,
I’m part of MPTFriends, donors who give $1,000 ayear to help underwrite MPTF social services. One of
our goals is to use social media to help educate the
younger generation of industry members about how
MPTF can help them — now and down the line — and
get them involved. We’re reinventing how to reach
out to them, targeting different groups with different
platforms.”
HANDS-ON HELP: “At the Instant Film Festival in
March, a bunch of us go to campus, where teams of
residents are given a word or a phrase and have a
brief amount of time to create and shoot a short on
their phones. Residents act in the pieces and judge
them and then watch them in the theater. It’s so
much fun.”
PERSONAL IMPACT: “The board is so diverse —
it’s allowed me to see different perspectives than
my own and to be more empathetic. It’s definitely
affected my outlook when I work with producers
and writers. A lot of that comes from sitting with
the residents and hearing about how they got
started, and how things used to be in Hollywood. It’s
fascinating.”JEFFREY R. EPSTEIN
PROFESSION: Director of
corporate communications,
The Walt Disney Company.HOW HE GOT INVOLVED:
“Geoffrey Colo is one of my
closest friends. He invited me
to The Night Before — an MPTF fundraising event
held the night before the Oscars — where I learned
more about MPTF. A week later I got a tour of the
campus.”
BOARD DUTIES: “I serve as a cochair of the NextGen
events committee, where we focus on raising the
awareness of our board and MPTF as a whole. It’s
something I’m passionate about. We also coordinate
campus tours for people who come to our events;
they meet the residents and hear their stories. One
of the things that got me so interested in MPTF was
they told me Ruthie Tompson was there. She worked
as an animator on Snow White. She’s still a spitfire
at 108!
“In my mind, this is not a daily commitment,
but a many-times-a-day commitment. There are
board meetings, offline meetings and smaller group
discussions about what we can do. Obviously, we are
stronger when we pool our resources.”
FAMILY TIES: “It’s not just people in the industry
that MPTF helps, but their family members in need.
At the Summer Party last year, [actor] Clark Gregg
talked about the challenges his mother-in-law was
facing regarding her independence. MPTF gave her
the resources to get her settled.”
PERSONAL IMPACT: “Being in corporate
communications, I get to see the wonderful things
the Walt Disney Company does for nonprofits. The
company is a major donor to MPTF. Because of
what I do, it gives me a greater appreciation of the
company’s generosity.”MONICA MACER
PROFESSION: A writer-
producer, she’s currently
showrunner of the Netflix
dramedy Gentefied; other
credits include Queen Sugar
and Nashville.HOW SHE GOT INVOLVED: “My friend Yvette Nicole
Brown recruited me. And I was also at a place in my
life where I wanted to give back. I’m half-Korean; we
speak in a different way to our elders. This is where
I belong, honoring those who came before us in the
industry.”
BOARD DUTIES: “I’m on the events and membership
committees. I organized a twenty-fifth-anniversary
screening of Thelma & Louise on campus, with a
Q&A afterward with Callie Khouri [who wrote the
film and in 2012 created Nashville]. I’ve worked the
photo booth at The Night Before, and worked at The
Evening Before [a fundraiser held the night before
the Emmys]. For our summer event last year, I said
to Geoffrey, “We need to get some of the Nashville
talent to perform.” He got Clare Bowen and her
husband [Brandon Robert Young, another musician].”
HANDS-ON HELP: “Recently, I’ve been planning and
shepherding ‘Reel Stories, Real Lives’ [a program
held each November in which celebrities tell stories
of how industry members have benefited from
MPTF]. A goal of MPTF is for the NextGen Board to
have more of a planning role. In 2017, I wrote the
story of Jim Etters, a veteran who had been trying
to get his benefits. An MPTF social worker helped
him get 100 percent of what he was due. It nearly
doubled his monthly income.”
PERSONAL IMPACT: “My show Gentefied is
multigenerational. It’s very important to me that
the characters be multigenerational, because of the
people on campus — they are active and vibrant.
It’s important that my characters be fully realized in
that way.”LYNDSEY MILLER
PROFESSION: She’s a
publicity executive who
has worked throughout
the industry, most recently
at Valhalla Entertainment
for Gale Anne Hurd, whose
credits include The Walking
Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, The Terminator and
Aliens.HOW SHE GOT INVOLVED: “I have a friend who
works on philanthropic campaigns for well-known
organizations. I was talking to her about a good way
to give back, because we are so lucky to be working
in this industry. She suggested MPTF. I had known
aboutMPTFfromtheNightBeforeparty,butwhen
I startedlookingintotheorganization,Icouldn’t
believeI hadn’theardmoreaboutit.I signedupfor
a campus tour andIwas hooked after that.I’ve per-