Following this year’s Films Reflecting Ourselves Fest, the African American Cinema Societies’ premiere film festival, dozens of film students — including many of the award-winning screeners — made a point to thank and congratulate Mikayah Lee. She was the architect behind the celebration and has been for countless AACS events in the past two years. 

“Mikayah’s been the boss,” said Dominique Draper, a School of Cinematic Arts alum who’s known Lee since her freshman year. “[Not] on some like, ‘Do this, do that,’ but she’s leading with love, making people feel good and has good intentions. “

But for the Washington D.C-native, the journey to boss status — AACS president, Emmy award trophy presenter and World Culture Film Festival participant — hasn’t been an easy one. In fact, it’s been a journey filled with humility, loss and consistent perseverance.

When Lee was 12, her mother died — an event that she said altered her perspective on life, and subsequently, her perspective on storytelling. Lee said she began writing in middle school as a means to cope with grief, but initially didn’t want to go to college, believing that it was a waste of money. Until she received a push from mentors who believed in her.

“I had a couple of teachers back during high school who all encouraged me and they saw something in me that I didn’t necessarily see in myself at the time,” Lee said. “They’re like, ‘There’s no reason why you can’t get into a good school.’”

Lee ended up getting into two of the best film schools in the country: USC and NYU. However, when she first got to USC, she felt a sense of homesickness; the University was the first time she had felt like such a small minority.

“D.C. is like ‘Chocolate City,’ and so I had only grown up around Black and Brown people. We were the majority back home, not the minority,” Lee said. “I had never experienced feeling like the minority and experiencing microaggressions and those different things, until I got here. It was definitely a culture shock.”

Despite not having initially felt comfortable in her new environment, Lee’s talent and natural leadership skills were evident to everyone around her, according to Draper. Amazed by her abilities, Draper gave Lee her first job as an assistant director for his project, “Hell of a Child,” when Lee was a sophomore. 

“She was avoiding leadership initially, but it’s in her. So I’m like, ‘Girl, you’re AD. You run shit,” Draper said. 

Eventually, Lee fully stepped into her own light. In her junior year, she became the president of AACS and began building the community she lacked in her early years at USC.

“[We’re] just able to feel seen, to feel heard,” Lee said about AACS. “Everyone has that feeling when they come … We all get it because we’re all in it together.”  

In her time with AACS, Lee said attendance at its events has nearly doubled. Lee said she has taken steps to bridge gaps between current students and notable Black alumni in film, and hopes to create an official alumni chapter for Black filmmakers. She also spearheaded the club’s initiative to produce “Poise,” the organization’s first official group film, which will debut at Ray Stark Theater on May 3.   

“The breadth and versatility of [Lee] is that she knows how to take an idea through development and through final execution,” said Fiyin Gambo, a graduate student studying film and television, who worked with Lee on “Poise” as well as on his independent film “Afterlife.” 

Simultaneously, Lee’s career as an independent filmmaker began to balloon in her junior year. In 2025, she released “Where We Go From Here,” a short film centered around a young girl who struggles to grieve the loss of her mother. She said the film was a full-circle moment for her, as she had to retrace her journey and journals from her younger self to communicate the message she wanted to about grief. 

It fulfilled Lee’s longstanding wish to create a film honoring her mother, and ended up being screened at the 2025 FRO Fest, City of Angels Festival and World Culture Film Festival. 

“The biggest thing that I wanted to convey with ‘Where We Go From Here’ was that duality exists within grief,” Lee said. “You cannot have light without darkness.”

The through-lines of hope, love and faith are something that Lee seeks to continue in her work as a filmmaker. 

“I look forward to inputting digestible messages of hope and inspiration and making people aware of ways that we can continue to grow in our society in ways that are entertaining,” Lee said. “That’s how the messages reach people in the stories that we create.”

As she prepares to graduate from USC in May, leaving AACS and heading into her professional career, Lee said she wants to build on the light her mother gave her.

“Every single person who talked about my mom would always tell me she was such a bright light. She was just the most warm, bright woman,“ Lee said. “I literally have made it my life’s mission to be that, to continue her legacy of spreading light and of being a light in the world.”