We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dominique Ebron. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dominique below.

Dominique, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

Programs for high school students interested in animation, film & television should be introduced to programs like RE:imagine and k-12 should know early on about ASIFA. I believe giving the career advisors and the teachers access to resources to organizations like RE:IMAGINE and ASIFA can set students up for success. There should be a discussion about a budget set aside for teachers to bring in guest speakers from these two groups to expose students early on..

About ASIFA – South:
ASIFA-South is the Southeastern US Chapter of ASIFA International, the international animation network – headquartered in Atlanta, GA. The goal of ASIFA-South is to foster and unite the animation community locally and globally to promote artists and the art of animation. We aim to better the industry through communication and collaboration.

About RE:imagine
At the core of RE:IMAGINE lies a deep commitment to workforce development. This commitment drives them to offer Gen Z creatives invaluable exposure and educational pathways, leading to workforce opportunities in the film and media industry. Their programs, including the No Comment Film Fellowship, EMERGE Apprenticeship, and in-school Workshops, exemplify this dedication.

Throughout my high school experience I had no knowledge of mentorship programs and hoping to get that information from my career advisor was challenging due to lack of research. I figured I would look into it on my own prior to graduating. So I researched animation communities around Atlanta and stumbled upon ASIFA – South.

While attending the networking mixers, I found that all of the committee members volunteer their time and support the community by bringing in Industry professionals to speak about their journey and get the opportunity to ask them questions. That got me started on my journey into learning about the animation community here in Atlanta, Georgia and through that experience I learned about RE:imagine and got the opportunity to work with them while volunteering with ASIFA.
Fast forward, I am now the Director of Programming at ASIFA – South and responsible for overseeing stop-motion workshops in our local community, assisting with animation events such as International Animation Day in October, Online Figure Drawing Classes every month, and selecting films along with my Executive team for our Film Festival every two years.

I work with RE:imagine as a Teaching Artist working with the DECA high school students teaching graphic design workshops where they learn Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator skills to create and develop presentation materials for their upcoming competitions.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi, I’m Dominique Ebron, a masters student at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I work at BWA Studios (Black Women Animate) as the Associate Creative Manager and volunteer at ASIFA – South as the Programming Director. I am an artist first before anything else. I can’t stay away from a good story. I enjoy hiking and traveling a lot with friends or alone. I get excited about my next adventure and can’t wait to fly.

I’ve studied abroad in Jamaica and learned about a community called the Maroons. They are descendants of slaves who have fought for their freedom from the British and stayed freed. That experience led me on my thesis journey to research more about how to improve representation of Black characters in the animation industry by designing authentic characters of the African Diaspora. While getting my thesis, I’ve collaborated with the director of Goat Mouth Jabari Brown and was onboarded as the Lead Character Designer. This amazing community led me to want to develop a character from this culture and became the protagonist for the film. I love research and learning about different cultures and their history. In the process of learning, I have made many international friends throughout my journey.

I am passionate about character design, creating environments and bringing them to life. I am an advocate for education, workforce development and community engagement. My life revolves around animation, volunteering and development programs in Atlanta. I am very involved in many organizations and have had a great opportunity to produce a commercial with some of my friends and have been blessed to recruit them for special projects I had the opportunity to be a part of. I love meeting new people and had the experience to speak at college classes about networking and portfolio building. I’ve helped solve problems by learning how to make explainer videos for my job and it became a way for me to give a helping hand.

My long term goal is to expose students to organizations that can align with them to get a job faster in the animation industry through incubators, apprenticeships, and opportunities to network with industry professionals through workshops and conferences.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

What advice do you have for managing a team and maintaining high morale?

If you’re a person of faith, praying with your team can lift up your spirits through the hard times.
All teams need a leader to keep up with team comradery or get someone to assist with doing that task.
Trusting the leads on your team to give clear assignments and always expect the worst so over communicating is best.
Communicate what you need from your team to be successful that means to clearly explain your strengths and weaknesses in skill or knowledge of something based on the needs of the project
Prioritize rest and remember everyone on your team is human and have families who need their time to.
Be excited about the project you’re working on. If you’re not excited, who would want to invest in you or the project?

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I have an older brother with autism and he is my hero. I learned most of my life lessons from him and watching him grow as a man throughout his journey has been awe inspiring. I interviewed an artist who was creating a cartoon about kids with disabilities called Team Supreme. Team Supreme is a cartoon created by Character Designer, and Animator, Joshua Leonard. It features kids who have a disability, but they are also gifted with amazing superpowers! I told him about my brother and he got excited and said the lead character for the show is autistic. Like how awesome is that to finally see a different side to the community finally being represented in such an amazing way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://theorg.com/org/asifa-south/org-chart/dominique-ebron-1
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominiqueebron/

Image Credits
ASIFA – South