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PBS Launches "Inspiring Woman" Web Series

American Masters, THIRTEEN's 28-time Emmy-winning arts and culture documentary series on PBS, launched its first web series, Inspiring Woman, at pbs.org/inspiringwoman.

Tracy Clayton
In Inspiring Woman, six innovators tell their own stories and explain how they're changing their respective industries: podcast host Tracy Clayton, Chef Angie Mar, JavaScript developer Sara Chipps, web-cam performance artist Molly Soda, entrepreneur Rakia Reynolds, and visual artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh.

This web series is part of American Masters' year-long online campaign supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, #InspiringWomanPBS, based on themes central to the lives of Dr. Maya Angelou and Lorraine Hansberry: artistic expression, academic success, active community engagement and acceptance of difference.

People can share stories of inspirational women in their own lives via text, images or videos at pbs.org/inspiringwoman or via Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #InspiringWomanPBS. A video compilation series of the best submissions are featured monthly as PBS and American Masters Instagram Stories.

Episode 1: Tracy Clayton, BuzzFeed Podcast Host: Another Round

 Tracy Clayton shares her journey building a career as a writer, humorist and co-host of BuzzFeed's award-winning podcast Another Round, including the evolving representation of black women in pop culture, Black Twitter, and her generalized anxiety disorder.



New episodes will be featured on this blog, as videos are released. The six-part web series features powerful professionals tell their own stories and explain how they're changing their respective industries.


  • Angie Mar (November 22), owner and executive chef of New York City restaurant The Beatrice Inn, and one of Food & Wine's Best New Chefs for 2017
  • Sara Chipps (December 6), the JavaScript developer who co-founded Girl Develop It, a non-profit focused on teaching women to become web and software developers, and is co-founder and CEO of Jewelbots, technology-enabled jewelry for tween and teen girls created to increase the number of girls entering STEM fields
  • Molly Soda (December 20), web-cam performance artist whose work blurs the lines of reality, performance, and physical space who recently co-curated the book Pics or It Didn't Happen: Images Banned From Instagram with artist Arvida Byström, which looks at Instagram and corporate social media image censorship
  • Rakia Reynolds (January 3), entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of multimedia communications agency Skai Blue Media
  • Tatyana Fazlalizadeh (January 17), the visual artist who created "Stop Telling Women to Smile," an international street art series that tackles gender-based street harassment.


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