Introducing, a four-part Refinery29 special running in November that will celebrate the women of color whose work in Hollywood we are grateful for — especially during a time when the industry is still struggling to be more inclusive. Effie is our final subject; be sure to check out parts one two , and three It was the sound bite heard 'round Hollywood last year. In a scene with producer Effie Brown on HBO's series for aspiring filmmakers, Project Greenlight , Matt Damon told the producer that a Black filmmaker might not be necessary for a project they were considering because, "When you're talking about diversity, you do it in the casting of the film, not in the casting of the show." It was an arrogant moment of white mansplaining that immediately went viral minutes after the scene aired."I think people couldn't stop talking about that moment because it was all too common," Brown says. "Everybody was like, 'Oh shit, that happened to me on Thursday,' in their boardrooms or their meetings. People always ask me, 'What was that like?' and I'm like, 'It was like any other Tuesday.'"Brown clarifies that she's not trying to be flippant — it's just that while conversation is great, harping on the same moment over and over can be frustrating when no actual change is happening. "I think we're getting a little tone-deaf with the word diversity," Brown says. "What we really need is a coalition of people on our side to make things happen. We need the 'woke' people to stand up and say, 'Hey hey hey, inclusiveness doesn’t mean that someone is taking something, it means that we’re sharing. It means that there is a place for all of us to have a seat at the table.'"The more Brown speaks, the more her ardent passion for the craft is evident. It's a love story that began when she was a self-described latchkey kid in New Jersey, when she'd often do homework and watch movies while waiting for her working parents to get home. An early favorite was The Warriors, a 1979 film about a multicultural gang in the Bronx. It was the first on-screen representation Brown can remember that made her feel "like we are here, we exist, not just with an older white guy taking care of us, like on Different Strokes."She also loved to bond with her dad over Bruce Lee movies. "We were always into inclusive films," Brown says. "Even if characters didn't look like me, there was still some form of other. Bruce Lee I could understand. Alien with a badass female lead, I could understand. Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch...that was foreign to me."Initially Brown wanted to be an actress, but because in the '80s she was "a bit of a mess — a dark-skinned Black girl wearing a Jheri curl and purple eyeshadow," her parents suggested she look at other routes in addition to the acting track. So it was at Loyola Marymount's film school that she honed her production skills. But as a senior in 1993, on the brink of graduation without the privilege of the connections that many of her white classmates had, she had no idea how to break into Hollywood.