Meet The Advisory Board
Volunteering Their Time And Expertise
Our Women In Comedy Advisory Board is comprised of experts in business, art, film, and comedy spanning cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, NY, London, and more. All of our advisory board members donate their time and guidance to aid in the mission of our organization.
Krystal Stark
Artistic Advisory Board Member
Krystal Stark is the owner of Stark White Entertainment, a talent management company based in New York City. Krystal specializes in developing comedic and lifestyle talent for film, TV, commercial and new media, and proactively works with her clients to create opportunities by producing content for TV and new media. Krystal’s clients have appeared on networks including Comedy Central, BET, MTV, HBO, FOX, Bravo, VH1, and truTV. Additionally, her clients have been featured in major publications like Entertainment Weekly, Huffington Post, ELLE.com and BuzzFeed.
Krystal is the co-president of the Ladies of Comedy Association (LOCA), a professional organization dedicated to advancing the careers and positions of women on the business side of comedy.
Leigh Giuliano
Business Advisory Board Member
Leigh moved to the Chicagoland area from Santa Cruz to study business and economics at North Park University. With a love for the subject, she stayed in the area and began building her career in finance and operations. She specializes in small business accounting, and in her most recent role, is serving as Financial Analyst to CNO Financial Group, where her small team oversees a $115M budget. She spends her free time with her spouse at the golf course, and with her dogs at the dog park.
Hope Flood
Artistic Advisory Board Member
Hope Flood is the founder of the Comics Rock Convention in California. Hope has been in the comedy industry for over 20 years curating and producing showcases and festivals that have helped launch the careers of comedians such as Jamie Foxx and Chris Tucker.
Ana Breton
Artistic Advisory Board Member
Ana Breton is currently an Emmy Nominated Digital Producer for Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.
Ana has 7+ years of working in film production. She was a camera operator for the movie "In Football We Trust," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015.
On the side, you can find her working on comedy videos with The Box, the all-female comedy talk show at The People's Improv Theatre. She was a member of UCB's Digital Team The Council and the all-female Digital Team LASH.
She was born in Mexico City, speaks Spanish & really likes tacos.
Michelle Cline
Business Advisory Board Member
Michelle Cline is the VP of Operations for global HR firm, FurstPerson. There aren’t too many people who can say that they were the first employee and are still with the company 20 years later – she is proud to be that person at FurstPerson. As the owner of global customer support, she is dedicated to helping our customers regardless of the situation or time of day. Her team and I draw on our expertise, resourcefulness, and customer-first attitude to solve any problem. Some problems are more difficult to solve than others, but we pursue solutions relentlessly until we identify the root cause and resolve the issue permanently. Her work can be frustrating and difficult, but watching customers achieve success makes it worthwhile.
Milly Tamarez
Artistic Advisory Board Member
Milly Tamarez is a comedic actress based out of Brooklyn, New York. She has been featured on Vice, BET, Flama, Above Average, Univision, and Comedy Central. She is the one of the creators and producers of the Diverse as Fuck Festival a comedy festival that highlights diversity. She is one of the founders of the all women of color improv team Affirmative Action. As a main cast member of the online video sketch collective deadass her work has been featured in the Daily Dot, HelloGiggles, Galore Magazine, Adweek, CodeBlack Report. She is currently in the Advanced Study Program of the Upright Citizens Brigade. She is also a company member of Story Pirates. You can catch milly at any number of sketch and improv shows across NYC.
Rochona Majumdar
Artistic Advisory Board Member
Rochona is an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago in the Departments of Cinema and Media Studies, South Asian Languages and Civilizations. She is a historian of gender, sexuality, and cinema in modern India. She has written books and scholarly articles on arranged marriage, love, art cinema, film clubs, and on notions of civility and society in Indian political thought. Rochona is also interested in film curation and festival organization. She is currently working on a book entitled
Art Cinema in India.
Dina Nina Martinez
Artistic Advisory Board Member
Dina Nina Martinez who was called "Very funny" by James Corden of The Late Late Show is a comic, actor and speaker based in the midwest. She is the creator of Lady Laughs Comedy Festival based in Madison, WI with a satellite festival in Wichita, KS. She has toured with Lizz Winstead and Shawn Pelofsky and is currently on tour with I <3 Funny Women! Lady Laughs Comedy Tour. Her mission to create amazing spaces for women and LGBTQ+ people is her driving force. Her task is as gentle and sweet as Al Roker and as tough and rugged as Gwyneth Paltrow, yet much more likeable.
Trish Nelson
Artistic Advisory Board Member
BanterGirl's founder Trish Nelson is a producer, performer, writer, and (according to her taxes) a waitress living in NYC. She’s produced weekly and monthly shows throughout NYC and beyond working with many performers including Women of Letters, Dave Hill, and John Hodgman to name a few. She has also helped to put together live shows and tours across the country for Broad City, Impractical Jokers, Jim Jefferies, Key & Peele, Bill Burr, Chris Hardwick, and Amy Schumer, as well as many others. Through BanterGirl LLC, Trish is committed to providing platforms and creating work that focuses on women, while launching diverse female talent through projects that help shed light on women and the female voice.
Lynn Harris
Artistic Advisory Board Member
Lynn Harris is the founder of Gold Comedy for Girls and is a believer, and leader, in the power of pop culture to drive change, especially when it’s funny. Her writing—on gender, culture, and a wide range of social justice issues—has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Salon, Glamour, and a twenty-year-career’s worth of national newspapers, magazines, and literary anthologies. She founded and taught for years Mediabistro’s popular class in Humor Writing for Journalists. Lynn has appeared on TV and radio like a jillion times, including as a Tonya Harding lookalike, which is a long story.
Mary Kennedy
Artistic Advisory Board Member
Mary resides in Los Angeles and has over 20 years experience in Stand Up Comedy. As a successful comedic actress, Mary has a recurring role on Netflix's Shameless, Appearances on Conan, and regularly performs as a Professional Stand Up Comic and National Headliner. Mary also serves as Program Director of Youth Acting Biz.
Janice Lopez
Business Advisory Board Member
Janice Lopez is the Managing Director of Entrepreneurial Services at WBDC and Director of the Women’s Business Center – Chicago. Janice works with female entrepreneurs in many industries and leads the Latina Entrepreneurial Accelerated Development Program and the Latina Business Program, which enables women who speak Spanish access to the same high-quality business supports as English-speakers. Janice also provides oversight to the Early Childhood Education Entrepreneurship Program, and her impact on the childcare community is evident throughout the city. She is a business consultant with over 22 years experience with small to mid size companies. She was recently awarded The Chicago Foundation For Women's Impact Award honoring the economic impact her work has had on the lives of thousands of women.
Angie Gaffney
Artistic Advisory Board Member
Angie is a creative entrepreneur and film producer in Chicago, Illinois with a passion for storytelling, both through media and performance art. Her business interests focus on developing artists, their stories, and the community around them. Angie believes that business and art go hand-in-hand, the thing you love can absolutely be the thing that feeds you, and that disruption is the key to innovation. Angie is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Stage 18 Chicago, the Founder and President of Black Apple Media, and she teaches at Second City's Harold Ramis Film School and DePaul University.
Stephanie Jeter
Artistic Advisory Board Member
Stephanie Jeter is an award-winning filmmaker from Chicago, Illinois. After graduating with the help of a writing scholarship from DePaul University’s film program, Stephanie has spent the past ten years freelancing on various studio films, network television shows and commercials. She has worked with companies such as Showtime, Warner Brothers, Fox Television Studios, and BET.
She has also built a body of creative work as a writer and director, including the short film Searching for Isabelle, Vanishing Oakenwald a theatrical play, and has feature-length screenplays in development.
She is Head of Production for OTV (Beta), and Writer/Director at Searching Productions focusing her work on auteur-driven commercial, film and television projects created by and for people of color.
Tia Stokes
Business Advisory Board Member
Tia Stokes, Founder of Meaningful Training believes that nonprofit organizations are the heart of our community. With over 20 year experience working in nonprofit settings Tia understands the special landscape and challenges that nonprofits face in doing the important work needed to serve and empower their community. She has worked with small to large non-profits to assist with board development, strategic planning, and program development. She has experience working with a variety of groups directly such as battered women and children, incarcerated females, hospice patients, those infected affected by HIV/AIDS and refugees. Tia loves working with multifunctional non-profit teams to help them identify and align their strategic goals to programs. She has extensive experience with all areas of the employee development lifecycle including: recruitment, selection, onboarding, supervising, discipline, training and most important, coaching.
Lynne Parker
Artistic Advisory Board Member
Lynne is the founder and CEO of Funny Women and the Funny Women Awards, now in their 15th year, which provide a valuable platform for women starting their comedy careers.
Lynne is also a respected writer and commentator, regularly contributing to business and consumer publications including the Independent, Guardian and the Huffington Post. Funny Women works with some of the world’s leading companies and organisations including JLL, PwC, MasterCard, Investec, Lloyds of London, Aon, Virgin, Dun & Bradstreet and Accenture running bespoke corporate events and providing workplace training.
Lynne’s pioneering work in female comedy has been recognised with several awards and nominations.
Jill Valentine
Artistic Advisory Board Member
Jill Valentine is a South Side Chicago native that has worked as an actor, writer, improvisor, director and sketch comedian all over town. You may have seen Jill with The Cupid Players, with The Deltones, Feminine Gentlemen or with her burlesque parody sketch comedy group Off Off Broadzway. Jill is the Executive Producer of The Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival and The Chicago Women's Funny Festival. Jill has been with the company since 2004 and is proud to be a founding principal of Stage 773.
Ashley McAtee
Artistic Advisory Board Member
Ashley McAtee is a content and community leader in Los Angeles, CA. She is currently Operations Director at WhoHaha, a creative community and digital studio co-founded by Elizabeth Banks’ for women in comedy. Ashley's previous experience includes running influencer and content departments at social media startups Cooler and Flipagram as well as managing social media strategies for celebrities and brands including Mark Ruffalo, Nicole Kidman, and The Hunger Games book series. Ashley enjoys travel, choral singing, and dismantling the patriarchy.
Tracy Hatfield
Artistic Advisory Board Member
Tracy Hatfield is the CEO/Owner of Social Snacks, an all-female video strategy & production company. The Emmy-award winning content creator has over 20 years experience working in TV newsrooms across America with NBC, ABC and CBS affiliates as a special projects producer. Before launching her own video production company, Tracy was Editor in chief of a women's lifestyle website leading editorial and video teams in lifestyle content and big-brand integrated videos. With over 11,000 interviews under her belt, Tracy has a skill for pulling out the best in people, making them and their companies shine on camera and connect with their audiences. The Social Snacks team also provides video support and training for Women Tech Founders interviewing the leading women in male-dominated fields for the organizations educational video series.
Louis Thomas
Business Advisory Board Member
What does 6 years in the Marine Corps and a deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan do to a person? It turns them into an accountant. I've lived in the Cleveland area (that's in Ohio) my entire life and won't trade the 10 minute walk to the beach, albeit Lake Erie, for anything. Unless it's Huntington Beach, California... I'm a small business owner and a full time accountant for the Federal Government. That's almost a double negative, but I love numbers; I'm an analytical problem solver. I'm hoping that through expert professional advice, I can provide Women in Comedy a much needed outlet to make fun of men. I mean, to help Women in Comedy grow and meet its organizational goals: Empower, Connect, and Advocate for Comedic Women, or Women in Comedy.
Monica Carmean
Business Advisory Board Member
Monica Carmean is an attorney who has worked in the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, and the White House. She is a graduate of Northwestern University and the Georgetown University Law Center, where she served as a Senior Editor on the Georgetown Journal of Poverty Law and Policy. Monica is a member of the bars of the District of Columbia, Maryland and the Supreme Court of the United States.
As a comic, Monica shares shares searing accounts of current events and misadventures in dating. She trained at the Second City and has appeared on many of Chicago's hottest stages. In Monica's best life, women get all the mic time.