Black Butterfly Recipient for Acting

Kiandra "KiKi" Layne is best known for her starring roles in such films as the romantic drama If Beale Street Could Talk, the drama Native Son, the action superhero film The Old Guard, and the romantic comedy Coming 2 America.

Layne's first acting role was with Lena Waithe in the pilot for the drama series The Chi.

Black Reel Award winner, Layne was featured in composer Max Richter's Voices, which was inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The album contains readings of the Declaration by Eleanor Roosevelt and Layne, with a further 70 readings by people around the world.

Layne is from Cincinnati, Ohio.

Black Butterfly Recipient for Producing

Brenda Gilbert is the Co-Founder & President of BRON, a company she co-founded with her husband Aaron L. Gilbert in 2010.

Brenda previously served as President of BRON Animation, where she produced and recently delivered the original animated film The Willoughbys to Netflix. Currently, her focus is on BRON Life, the company’s non-scripted division, where she’s passionate about giving a voice to those who need one.

Over her 20 years in the media and entertainment space, Gilbert has produced or executive produced several animated and live-action films, including The Joker, The Birth of a Nation, Monster, Assassination Nation, and The Nightingale.

Black Butterfly Recipient for Editing

Stephanie Filo, ACE is a four-time Emmy, as well as Peabody and ACE Eddie Award-winning Film/Television Editor and activist based in Los Angeles, CA, and Sierra Leone, West Africa.

In 2021, she won a Primetime Emmy award for her work on HBO's "A Black Lady Sketch Show", making her team the first all-Women of Color editing team to take home the award for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming. In 2022, she made history again as a member of the first all-black editing team to be nominated for and win both an Emmy and an ACE Eddie for "A Black Lady Sketch Show". Most recently in 2023, she has made history again, as the first Picture Editor and first Black editor to ever be Emmy nominated for three different series at the same time.

Black Butterfly Recipient for Makeup

Ashunta Sheriff-Kendricks is an illustrious figure in the beauty industry, acclaimed for her pioneering makeup artistry for over two decades.

Known for her impeccable technique and approach to makeup, Ashunta has illuminated the visages of such entertainment titans as Jay Z, Zendaya, Rihanna, Diddy, and Alicia Keys.

Ashunta's remarkable career is further distinguished by two Emmy nominations and a Black Reel Award nomination, recognizing her outstanding contributions to television and film. Her work has graced major entertainment productions, from The Best Man, Empire, The Lost City, and Hidden Figures.

Black Butterfly Recipient for Art

Myrtis Bedolla is the owner and founding director of Galerie Myrtis, an emerging blue-chip gallery and art advisory specializing in twentieth and twenty-first-century American art with a focus on work created by African American artists.

Bedolla has recently gained national press in the New York Times article “Black Gallerists Press Forward Despite a Market That Holds Them Back” in June 2020 and authored “Why My Blackness is Not a Threat to your Whiteness” in Cultured Magazine in July 2020. Past coverage also includes being voted Best Gallery by the Baltimore Sun in 2017; “Black Art in the Spotlight,” Baltimore Magazine, September 2018; “Living with Art: Myrtis Bedolla Builds a Home and Gallery in Old Goucher,” BMORE Art, Issue 3; “Women in the Arts,” Baltimore Style Magazine, October 2013.‍