Hollywood executive picked to lead ASU’s film school
Film executive Cheryl Boone Isaacs will lead Arizona State University’s new film school, bringing decades of industry experience and plans to help deepen the school’s stated commitment to impact and inclusion in the film industry.
Boone Isaacs is a film marketing and public relations executive who ASU said has worked on hundreds of movies and served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the first Black person and third woman elected to that position.
Starting Jan. 1, Boone Isaacs will be founding director of the Sidney Poitier New American Film School, which was named after the Hollywood icon and first Black man to win an Academy Award for best actor.
She will lead the school across its campuses in Los Angeles, Tempe and soon Mesa, where a large state-of-theart media center will open next year. The film school currently has nearly 700 students and has grown significantly since its start as a film program in 2005, according to the university.
One of Boone Isaacs’s priorities in her career is to help diversify Hollywood and increase representation for women and people of color, a focus she’d like to bring to her work at ASU as well.
“It’s wonderful to be able to be involved and help shape the minds and focus them on what it is they feel they would like to learn, what they do learn and what they do with whatever it is that they learn with their career,” she said.
Steven Tepper, dean of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, which houses the film school, said Boone Isaacs has built her career “championing and exemplifying” two key values of the film school: inclusion and excellence.
“Boone Isaacs is one of the most respected leaders in Hollywood and she fully understands its operating system, making her the perfect person to build a school that can help disrupt both film education and the industries it serves,” Tepper said in a statement.
ASU announced in late March that director and professor Dianah Wynter would lead the school. In August, the university updated its news release to say she would no longer take the director position due to family reasons.
Goals for the film school
Boone Isaacs said she wants to make sure students are prepared for and exposed to the wide range of careers and opportunities in the film industry.
“Technology is going to allow a broadening of opportunities, a broadening of careers. And most people, I didn’t even know, all the facets of the entertainment business in its whole, as well as the supporting areas, it’s actually quite vast.”
The film school should continue to impart skills and technologies as well as give students an understanding of different aspects they might not have considered as careers, she said. She believes that broad foundation also will help students better succeed in the industry.
“It’s a fast moving business, it’s a lot of money, it’s a lot of egos, and it’s really a lot of fun … . I want (students) to know that you have to work hard but the rewards are terrific and it’s fun doing it.”
Everyone knows about writers, actors and directors, she said, but it takes “an army” to put together a film or television series, and those behind-thescenes roles are positions students often know less about. The 10 minutes of credits at the end of a film show names of everyone who worked on it — “all experts in their field” — and Boone Isaacs wants to expose students to all those possibilities.
A focus on diversity and inclusion
Boone Isaacs said she was drawn to ASU by its focus on inclusion rather than exclusion, something that marks her legacy in Hollywood circles, too.
She served on the board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for 24 years and was president from 2013 to 2017, during significant discussions on diversity and inclusion.
In 2015 and 2016, the academy gave all 20 Oscars acting nominations to white actors, launching the #OscarsSoWhite movement. Boone Isaacs immediately after led the board to approve broad changes, including the goal of doubling female and minority members by 2020, per the New York Times.
“The academy is going to lead and not wait for the industry to catch up,” she said at the time, adding that governance and voting changes would help make the voting member base more diverse.
Boone Isaacs said she hopes to bring that same focus on representation and diversity to ASU.
“I’ve always thought it’s sort of a silly concept to leave money on the table, if you will. Why? There are men, women, members of the spectrum, all of which have passion, ideas, dreams. Why not encourage them in their passions, whatever it may be, and help the younger generations to grow?”
Boone Isaacs wants to get the message out that if students have the desire and they meet the qualifications, the film school wants them.
“What you don’t want to have is exclusion,” she said. “You don’t want the next generation to feel that for whatever reason, they cannot participate. We have to get rid of that.”
ASU aspires for its film school to be “the most inclusive, most affordable and most impactful film program for the next generation of cinematic storytellers,” according to its website. Choosing Poitier as its namesake was part of its “commitment to diversity in storytelling and storytellers,” per the school.
‘Honored to be part of his legacy’
Boone Isaacs starting learning about the film industry at a young age because her older brother worked in film. She met Poitier for the first time in the late 1960s and crossed paths with him through the years.
“Sidney Poitier — the man, the icon, the legend — is my North Star who exemplifies determination, passion, professionalism and excellence,” she said in a statement. “I am honored to be part of his legacy and to impart his ethos to future generations of storytellers.”
Knowing his name was associated with ASU’s film school was part of what drew her in.
“He represents such excellence and grace and brilliance and respect in our business,” she said, adding that she then learned the journalism and law schools were named for Walter Cronkite and Sandra Day O’Connor, respectively.
“These were names, three people, who really do possess values that I think are important and certainly important to impart and to spread to the next generations,” she said.
Boone Isaacs graduated from Whittier College in Southern California with a political science degree. She first became a flight attendant before moving to Los Angeles at 25 to look for a job in the film industry. The first gig she got was in marketing, and she worked hard and moved her way up at a time when “diversity has been slight behind the camera.” She worked for several major studios on marketing and publicity.
She led Paramount Pictures’ global publicity department as executive vice president and planned marketing campaigns for films including “Forrest Gump” and “Braveheart,” according to ASU. She later founded her own company, CBI Enterprises, Inc., in 2000 and worked on publicity for other big films.
Boone Isaacs was inducted into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame in 2014. She was an adjunct professor and guest lecturer at several institutions, most recently teaching at Chapman University’s film school.
“I’ve enjoyed every minute of it and so I’m very, very pleased that I will continue to be able to pass it along, to move it forward,” she said.