"Hi, I’m Kayona, and I'm a multi-hyphenate artist and fledgling entrepreneur from Washington, DC. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve had an incredible vision for my life—to use my artistic talents to do great things in this world, like inspire, entertain, enlighten, and serve others."
Kayona Ebony Brown is a 2X Emmy Award-winner recognized for her work with sports storytelling. Her foray began with CBS SPORTS and the Super Bowl LV feature, BEFORE JACKIE, starring Viola Davis. As a multi-hyphenate storyteller, Kayona's work with both TV and film has one distinctive memorable element: its ability to penetrate and imprint on your soul.
Hailing from our nation’s capital, Kayona is a multi-hyphenate storyteller who grew up in a home that nurtured her eccentricities and unexpected interests of a girl. Thus, she rejected the presumed path of a Washingtonian (government work) in favor of art, Kayona started in entertainment as a radio DJ, which led to running her own indie record label.
Most recently, Kayona was a winner of the Roadmap Writer’s Diversity Initiative, and the Commission on Arts and Humanities/NEA grant for literature. She was tapped by CBS to pen the NCAA Championship game tease starring Jon Hamm, and subsequently to co-produce the 9/11 pregame tease for the NAVY vs AIR FORCE football game.
Kayona is also the founder of the entertainment venture, Siingle, a 2024 Black Ambition mentee, a program co-founded by Pharrell Williams for rising entrepreneurs.
Kayona is represented by Granderson Des Rocher.
"Hi, I’m Kayona, and I'm a multi-hyphenate artist and entrepreneur from Washington, DC. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve had an incredible vision for my life—to use my artistic talents to do great things in this world, like inspire, entertain, enlighten, and serve others."
Kayona Ebony Brown is a 2X Emmy Award-winner recognized for her work with sports storytelling. Her foray began with CBS SPORTS and the Super Bowl LV feature, BEFORE JACKIE, starring Viola Davis. As a multi-hyphenate storyteller, Kayona's work with both TV and film has one distinctive memorable element: its ability to penetrate and imprint on your soul.
Hailing from our nation’s capital, Kayona is a multi-hyphenate storyteller who grew up in a home that nurtured her eccentricities and unexpected interests of a girl. Thus, she rejected the presumed path of a Washingtonian (government work) in favor of art, Kayona started in entertainment as a radio DJ, which led to running her own indie record label.
Most recently, Kayona was a winner of the Roadmap Writer’s Diversity Initiative, and the Commission on Arts and Humanities/NEA grant for literature. She was tapped by CBS to pen the NCAA Championship game tease starring Jon Hamm, and subsequently to co-produce the 9/11 pregame tease for the NAVY vs AIR FORCE football game.
Kayona is also the founder of the entertainment venture, Siingle, a 2024 Black Ambition mentee, a program co-founded by Pharrell Williams for rising entrepreneurs.
Kayona is represented by Granderson Des Rocher.
I am greatly influenced by sports. I love sports, and honestly, if I wasn’t so in love with filmmaking, I would be on FS1 or ESPN somewhere talking about it everyday. I look up to my favorite athletes like a kid, and I look to them for cues on how to handle and approach many aspects of life. My favorite athlete in particular has taught me so much about how to handle failure and how to handle success, work ethic, and even how to approach health and wellness.
2015 was one of the most difficult years of my life, but every night for that entire summer before I went to sleep, I would listen to Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk where she emphasized the importance of “finding your way back home.”
“Home” is a metaphor. When we experience a horrible failure, we’re consumed with sadness and negative feelings about our talent and maybe even our existence. Think of it as being pushed 20 miles underground.
Oddly enough, the same thing emotionally happens when we experience great success. We can get wrapped up in all the “good” stuff and get taken away from doing what it is that brought the success in the first place. Think of it as being flung 20 miles up in the air.
Neither is where we ought to be. But “Home" is that place right in the middle, right on the ground, right where we belong—where failure or success doesn’t really hold weight. When you find your way back home, that means you find your way back to doing what it is you love, where you do not let anything else matter to you.
For me, “Home” is telling stories. I do that through writing, acting, directing, editing… Whether I fail terribly or succeed greatly is irrelevant. I’m not 20 miles up or 20 miles down. As long as I can do what I love, I know how to find my way right back home where I belong.
Right. There’s Atlanta, Dear White People, Grown-ish, Insecure, Black-ish… and all of these shows are, in some way, speaking to the exact audience that I’m working to reach with Of Music and Men. But I believe this project can hold its own among these incredibly well-written, well-developed shows because my story examines existentialism and entrepreneurship unlike anything else on TV. It’s unique in that sense, and also in the sense that it’s told through the lens of a Black millennial female.
What will draw people in is the familiar friendship dynamic among the main female characters, as well as the somewhat familiar career angle in the independent music scene, but exploring and examining the human journey in the way that it does, along with all the other aspects of being an unorthodox person in a cookie-cutter world… Honestly, I’m exciting about how it’ll be received, and how it will live up to my goal of inspiring more entrepreneurship among young women.
I am greatly influenced by sports. I love sports, and honestly, if I weren’t so in love with writing, I would be on FS1 or ESPN somewhere talking about it everyday. I look up to my favorite athletes like a kid, and I look to them for cues on how to handle and approach many aspects of life. My favorite athlete in particular has taught me so much about how to handle failure and how to handle success, work ethic, and even how to approach health and wellness.
2015 was one of the most difficult years of my life, but every night for that entire summer before I went to sleep, I would listen to Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk where she emphasized the importance of “finding your way back home.”
“Home” is a metaphor. When we experience a horrible failure, we’re consumed with sadness and negative feelings about our talent and maybe even our existence. Think of it as being pushed 20 miles underground.
Oddly enough, the same thing emotionally happens when we experience great success. We can get wrapped up in all the “good” stuff and get taken away from doing what it is that brought the success in the first place. Think of it as being flung 20 miles up in the air.
Neither is where we ought to be. But “Home" is that place right in the middle, right on the ground, right where we belong—where failure or success doesn’t really hold weight. When you find your way back home, that means you find your way back to doing what it is you love, where you do not let anything else matter to you.
For me, “Home” is telling stories. I do that through writing, acting, directing, editing… Whether I fail terribly or succeed greatly is irrelevant. I’m not 20 miles up or 20 miles down. As long as I can do what I love, I know how to find my way right back home where I belong.
Right. There’s Atlanta, Dear White People, Grown-ish, Insecure, Black-ish… and all of these shows are, in some way, speaking to the exact audience that I’m working to reach with Of Music and Men. But I believe this project can hold its own among these incredibly well-written, well-developed shows because my story examines existentialism and entrepreneurship unlike anything else on TV. It’s unique in that sense, and also in the sense that it’s told through the lens of a Black millennial female.
What will draw people in is the familiar friendship dynamic among the main female characters, as well as the somewhat familiar career angle in the independent music scene, but exploring and examining the human journey in the way that it does, along with all the other aspects of being an unorthodox person in a cookie-cutter world… Honestly, I’m exciting about how it’ll be received, and how it will live up to my goal of inspiring more entrepreneurship among young women.