1. Lena Waithe
Lena is like a superhero. She is an actor, producer, writer, director, and overall badass. She is the first African-American woman to win an Emmy for comedy writing. Her Emmy-winning episode from "Master of None", a show she both acts in and writes for, is based on her own real-life experience of coming out as a lesbian. The episode is so relatable because at one moment she says she’s Lebanese because she struggles with saying the word lesbian, and it brought me back to the time I was coming out and couldn’t muster the strength to the say the one syllable word “gay”. Lena is the creator of drama series "The Chi", an advocate of Time’s Up, and co-chair of the Committee of Black Writers at the Writer’s Guild.