Cindy Birch

Award winning writer, producer and director, Cindy Malika Birch, was an artist and an entrepreneur long before learning what either word meant. At the age of five, she wrote, produced and directed variety shows in her family's den, while selling tickets and refreshments to the neighborhood audience. A few years later, she wrote and sold a children's magazine to her elementary schoolmates. That creativity and entrepreneurial spirit has remained with Cindy throughout her life. Her earliest poems were published when she was just 11 years-old, and she is a former New York Nuyorican Café Slam Winner, featured on a PBS special about American literacy. Cindy sold her first article to a national magazine while still an undergrad at Douglass College of Rutgers University. Her revealing and inspiring piece about domestic violence was published in "Praise" magazine and received rave reviews from readers. A former Miss Teen Model of New Jersey and Teen Model of America 1st Runnerup, Cindy has made the theater rounds in NYC. She has starred in numerous off-Broadway productions and toured with several other stage productions, including Colors of the Rainbow's 10-year run of "For Colored Girls..." After a move to LA, Cindy began producing her own theater, film, web and TV projects through her DraMAma Productions company. "A Sexy Love Fest," an original theater work she penned, had two successful runs on Hollywood's Theatre Row and Off-Broadway at the Playwright's Horizon on 42nd Street. Cindy was also invited to present the stage play during the annual ROAR Theatre Festival at the world renowned Nuyorican Poets Café in New York's Alphabet City. As a Staff Director at the Coleman and Smith Artistic Company (COLSAC) in Los Angeles, Cindy's production of "For Colored Girls..." earned a COLSAC Best Ensemble award the same year she won Best Director and Best Play for her production of "Shakin' the Mess Outta Misery." Meanwhile, TV networks and other independent production companies sought Cindy's talents and skills as a consultant, writer, producer and director. Her shows have aired on Fox, ESPN2, TV One, the BET family of networks and the Africa Channel. In 2009, she was hired as a Programming Consultant at TV One and later, won a Silver Telly award as Lead Writer and Associate Producer on the network's four-part series, "Murder in Black and White." The series was also nominated for a National Association of Black Journalists Excellence Award and hailed as an Emmy contender in the LA Times. Another of her TV projects, "Heart of the City: Katrina Five Years Later," for the revamped BET News, won a New York Association of Black Journalists award. Cindy received her BA degree in Journalism and Mass Media on a full James Dickson Car Scholarship at Rutgers University. In 2009, she returned to her alma mater to pursue an MBA at Rutgers Business School (RBS) in Newark, New Jersey. In addition to tending to her studies, Cindy also served as the General Manager of WRNU, Rutgers Radio. Under her leadership, programming was diversified and expanded to a 24/7 schedule, listenership and membership increased dramatically and the station won two Rutgers University awards, including Student Organization of the Year. Cindy was also awarded the Rutgers Newark Legacy Award for her efforts. In May of 2011, Cindy graduated with her MBA with concentrations in Marketing and Arts Management.