Raised in four countries and fluent in two languages, Nkechi spent her formative years living in the Cote D’Ivoire and England, where she was a member of the Oxford Youth Theatre. Her short films have been featured in film festivals on multiple continents, including North America, Africa and Europe. Her short, APARTMENT A, aired nationally on ABC, NBC, FOX and CBS affiliates. With a Masters degree in International Economics from New York University, Nkechi worked as a Senior Trader/Analyst at the prestigious Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Driven by her passion for writing, Nkechi embarked on bringing her experiences at the Federal Reserve to the small screen. Her original drama pilot, THE FED, follows five young Federal Reserve Fellows whose first day in the program coincides with the collapse of one of the U.S. largest banks. This lead to Nkechi’s first TV writing job as a Staff Writer on THE FINDER, starring Geoff Stults and Michael Clarke Duncan. She is currently a Executive Story Editor on BONES on Fox.
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Summary Of Her Talk
Nkechi spoke to the African Artists Association Membership about her career from transitioning from working on Wall Street to working as an Executive Story Editor on Bones. While working at the Federal Reserve in New York City she wrote a script about the Fed during the economic meltdown. There is nothing sexy about the Fed, but she was told to make it “sexy”. And she did. This script changed her life.
She left New York and moved to Los Angeles to become an actress. However, she was very frustrated by the experience and started making short films and taught herself to make films from the Internet. She emphasized that all of the information is there, on the Internet if you choose to use it and study it to your advantage and make the commitment to your goals and aspirations and your artistic career. Through all this she met Adesuwa McCalla who signed her to, MetaMorphic Entertainment.
Throughout the meeting she discussed the following role definitions: Story Editor vs. Writer vs. Show Runner there are fundamental differences between them, although the roles function pretty much the same for either drama or comedy. She also went through how the writing process worked from pitch to the final script as well as how a writing room worked.
Her final words of advice to the membership was to study scripts of writers whom they admire. Read, review and study them.