Adrienne Lopez is a woman who refuses to allow things to go unchanged if there’s any way she can improve them. During her eight-year tenure at Nickelodeon, she has risen from a producer to her current position, vice president of talent development for both Nickelodeon’s television and film projects. Always one to have a plan, Lopez used the leverage of her newest position to create the Nickelodeon Writers’ Fellowship Program.

She developed the program, now in its inaugural year, as a way to give writers of color the foot in the door that too few of them have had not only at Nickelodeon, but also in all of TV. Her response to the dog-eared notion that there aren’t enough talented Black and Latino writers to fill available positions is that “People don’t look. They don’t provide enough opportunities.” And that’s what Lopez feels is her obligation, not only as a woman of color, but also as a human being to do.

The goal of the Writers Fellowship Program is to provide yearlong fellowships to four writers to work various projects at Nickelodeon. The response to the call for writing samples was tremendous, netting nearly 1,000 applications, which made it difficult to choose just four. Lopez hopes to increase the number of fellowships with each coming year, in order to grant more opportunities. Her advice to anyone who wishes to write for children is to remember that they have specific sensibilities and to “be into story. Remember that funny is money.”