Sumi Parekh
Executive Director, Group Effort Initiative
Sumi Parekh is the Executive Director for the Group Effort Initiative (GEI), an organization launched and financed by Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively that exists to create a pipeline for members of underrepresented communities to get real experience towards lasting careers within the entertainment industry. To date, GEI has secured over 1,230 entertainment jobs for its participants.
Prior to her role at GEI, Sumi held several positions in the office of Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti, including the Executive Officer to the Deputy Mayor of Economic Development, where she served as a thought partner to the Deputy Mayor and as the Mayor’s Business Team Director and entertainment liaison, focusing on improving diversity, equity, and inclusion within Hollywood. While in Mayor Garcetti’s office, she started the Evolve Entertainment Fund, an alliance between the City of Los Angeles, industry leaders in entertainment and digital media, non-profit organizations, and educational institutions, dedicated to building career pathways into film, television, and music for women, people of color, and low-income Angelenos through paid internships, focused mentoring, and an ongoing series of workshops and panels. She also helped to launch LA Collab, an unprecedented effort to connect Latinx talent, executives, and creators to opportunities in the entertainment industry — and double Latino representation in Hollywood by 2030.
Sumi was a Program Manager at the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to improving life for all Angelenos, and prior to that she was the Director of Legislative Affairs and Programs at the Los Angeles Business Council (LABC).
Sumi currently serves as a Board member for Act to Change, a national nonprofit organization working to end bullying for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) youth, that started in under President Obama’s White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) in October 2015. She also serves as a Commissioner to the City of Los Angeles and serves on the LA Collab Board.
She graduated in 2013 from the University of Southern California with a Master’s in Public Policy and has a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin.
