Effie Brown

Effie T. Brown was an American film and television producer who was best known for producing the critically-acclaimed 2014 comedy "Dear White People." Born and raised in New Jersey, Brown loved movies as a childhood. But having grown up with a strict military father (she was born on a military base) and social worker mother, Brown never saw professional moviemaking as a viable career option. That all changed, however, when she became aware of Loyola Marymount University, which offered an undergraduate program in film production. Brown convinced her parents to let her attend the university in sunny Los Angeles, where she would spend the next four years absorbing everything there was to know about film production. Upon graduating, Brown nabbed a high profile job working as the Director of Development for Tim Burton Productions. Brown stayed at the job for a few years, where she learned the ins and outs of the film industry from one of its most visionary directors. She left Burton's company in the late '90s to become a line producer on such films as "Desert Blue" (1998) and "Speedway Junky" (1999), and eventually worked her way up to producer on such titles as "Real Women Have Curves" (2002) and "Everyday People" (2004). Then in the early 2000s Brown founded her own production company called Duly Noted, Inc., which quickly made a splash in Hollywood. As the head of Duly Noted, Brown produced such acclaimed films as "Rocket Science," "The Inheritance" (2011) and "Dear White People," thus establishing herself as one of Hollywood's most respected indie producers. In 2015 Brown joined the third season of "Project Greenlight" (HBO, 2001- ), alongside Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, as herself, and subsequently produced the HBO film "The Leisure Class," which was greenlit on the series. The following year, in 2016, Brown served as an executive producer on the series "Star" (Fox 2016- ). The music drama, created by Lee Daniels and Tom Donaghy, premiered in late December of 2016, and starred Jude Demorest and Queen Latifah.