In March, when Issa Rae's popular Web series, The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl [9], won the 2012 Shorty Award for best Web show, sore losers took to Twitter to make disparaging, racist comments about her victory. But who cares about critics when Pharrell Williams is one of your biggest fans? He funded the entire second season of ABG and signed her to his i am OTHER [10] creative venture. Since the debut of the series, which hilariously chronicles the life and times of a socially awkward black girl (played by Rae) and her multicultural cast of friends and frenemies, Rae has traveled the country on a 35-plus college tour and partnered with AMC Theatres to premiere a new episode of AGB in a new city every month. Rae hopes to continue to use the series to rail against the naysayers (who she says prove how much a show like hers is needed [11]) as well as the one-dimensional images of black life in TV and film. She's found success, but she also might have developed a new formula for putting black actors back in leading roles. 

Follow her blog [12] and like her Facebook [13] page.