Jennifer Mary Mears
In 2019, Jennifer Mary Mears founded Mary Made Me Media, Inc., a production company devoted to legacy-centered storytelling across film, television and digital platforms.
Jennifer’s path to directing was not linear — it was earned.
She began her professional career on Wall Street, serving as an Assistant Vice President in Treasury & Securities Services at JPMorgan Chase before transitioning to Morgan Stanley Fund Services as a Fund Accountant. After the 2008 financial crisis, the sudden passing of her mother and the election of President Barack Obama, her sense of purpose shifted. She left finance in 2009 and committed fully to the arts.
Jennifer trained at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting and built a professional career as a SAG-AFTRA actor before expanding her creative language behind the camera. For over 13 years she has worked as a union Location Scout with Local 817 Teamsters, shaping the visual architecture of major film and television productions including The Greatest Showman, Orange Is the New Black, Billions, Blue Bloods, The Wizard of Lies and Law & Order: Organized Crime. She is currently working on Dick Wolf’s new CBS crime drama CIA.
Her work as a scout — building worlds, negotiating neighborhoods, and understanding how space holds memory — naturally evolved into directing.
In 2023, Jennifer made her directorial music video debut with RAW, which premiered at the Portland Film Festival and won 2nd Place in the Made in New York Women’s Fund Film Festival. RAW marked a pivotal shift: from shaping environments for other directors to crafting her own cinematic voice.
A native New Yorker raised between Harlem and the Bronx, Jennifer’s work is rooted in lineage. Her grandmother was a photographer and one of the only Black women in her Manhattan photography club. Her family owned businesses in Harlem in the 1940s. That legacy of image-making, entrepreneurship and community care informs everything she creates.
Jennifer is an advocate for healing intergenerational trauma and illuminating Black agency. She is a Certified Ontological Leadership Coach and member of the International Coaching Federation.
She is currently directing her debut narrative film, MAMA — a deeply personal story exploring sisterhood, grief and the inheritance of memory.
“Let us bring forth our ancestral excellence to manifest the good we want to see in the world” ~Jennifer Mary Mears