Director Haifaa al-Mansour, producer Effie T. Brown and technology executive Annie Chang are joining the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors as the three new governors-at-large, the Academy announced on Monday.
With the new additions to the board that was created by recent elections in each Academy branch, the makeup of the 55-person board will become 30 women and 25 men, and 17 governors from underrepresented communities.
Al-Mansour is a Saudi Arabian director whose films “Wadjda” and “The Perfect Candidate” represented Saudi Arabia in the Oscars Best International Feature Film category; the first of those was the first feature film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and the first made by a female Saudi director. Brown is a producer whose work includes “Real Woman Have Curves,” “Rocket Science” and “Dear White People.” Chang is the vice president of creative technologies at Universal and serves as chair of the Academy’s Science and Technology council.
The new governors were nominated by Academy President Janet Yang, who is herself a governor-at-large, though term limits are forcing her off the board this year. They were approved by the existing board.
While the bulk of the governors are elected by members from the Academy’s 19 branches, the governors-at-large are nominated by the Academy president and voted in by the board. The at-large positions were created in 2016 in the aftermath of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy in an attempt to put more diverse voices in positions of authority.
Gregory Nava, Jennifer Yuh Nelson and Reginald Hudlin occupied those positions for the first three years, followed by DeVon Franklin, Rodrigo García and Yang for the next six.
