Throughout Women’s History Month, we’re spotlighting remarkable women who are cultivating collective spaces across creative industries. Women like Sylvia Zakhary; a creative entrepreneur, film producer, and founder/CEO of the Mamag Group—an award-winning entertainment company focused on global story-telling across film, tv, advertising, and more.

Sylvia Zakhary is Egyptian-American, born in New York City and raised throughout East Africa & the Middle East. Zakhary’s body of work, shaped by her upbringing, focuses on cultural authenticity and the advocacy of artistic freedom. In 2016, she founded the Mamag Group on this principle, seeking to bridge the gap between culture and commerce—challenging the status quo and building brands that champion representation. By 2019, Zakhary was listed as one of the Top Ten Storytellers to Watch by Variety, and Mamag was awarded the 4th Fastest Growing Agency Worldwide by Adweek.

Zakhary has collaborated with Julia Roberts, Cardi B, Alicia Keys, Ethan Hawke, Kali Uchis, Swizz Beatz, and more. A few recent credits include producing the 2021 NAACP Award-winning BLACK IS KING by Beyoncé, directing the WNBA 2022 Global Campaign, and creative-directing the 2022 Alicia + Keys World Tour. Her latest endeavor, the Storyhouse Foundation, is a global community & member-based platform dedicated to connecting artists, creatives & thought-leaders through space, experience, and culture. Zakhary opened the first 10,000-sq-ft Storyhouse in Los Angeles hosting dozens of cultural events, foreign film screenings, curated dinners, and even a “Laughing Meditation Session led by Donald Glover.”

You can check out more of Sylvia Zakhary’s work here on Creatively and @hellocreatively on Instagram.

What is the first creative project you remember?

My earliest creative “project” was hiding in the closet as a small child and drawing all over the walls…something my mother disdained, but never discouraged. I’m grateful for this. 🙂

But, if we are speaking professionally, I’d have to say it was being Franco Lacosta’s creative assistant on the first season of a show called Model Latina way back in the early 2000s! Wow, time has flown by but representation has remained a constant in my life.

Describe your aesthetic in three words.

Vibrant. Global. Elegance.

What was the most fulfilling collaboration you’ve worked on?

Creative Directing Alicia Keys’ performance for the Queen’s Jubilee in London last summer. There was something about that moment that simply unlocked a core memory for us all.

Do you think creativity is something you’re born with, or something you’re taught?

I wholeheartedly know “creativity” is something you are born with, and I also believe “creativity” is something we all have access to when we allow it to find us.

What do you know now that you wish you knew at the start of your career?

Trust the process. Every experience, every victory, every lesson was designed and written for your path.

How do you cultivate strong relationships with clients?

By listening intently and remaining refreshingly honest in collaboration.

One hundred years from now, what do you hope people write about your work?

I pray the spaces I create through Storyhouse are still in existence and that a whole new generation is working diligently inside, to push the work further, in ways we could have never imagined.

Follow @sylvia.zakhary on Creatively.

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