Storyteller Showrunner: Yvette Lee Bowser

What does it look like to walk into a room where you're the only one who looks like you, face an industry that wasn't built for you, and respond not by shrinking but by building an entirely new table? For Yvette Lee Bowser, it looks like 40 years of pioneering, producing, mentoring, and making history while committing to wake-in-joy every single morning.

In this episode of Mode to Joy, host Monica Lyle sits down with her Stanford classmate and dear friend Yvette Lee Bowser, the award-winning writer, producer, and showrunner best known for creating the iconic sitcom Living Single.

As the first and youngest Black woman to create and run a prime time series, Yvette has spent four decades shaping culture through storytelling, fighting for authentic representation in Hollywood, and lifting others as she climbed. This conversation is warm, wise, and genuinely unforgettable.

Listen below, or via your favorite podcast player.

In This Episode, You'll Hear:

  • What it means to be a culture bearer, and why Yvette believes art is a living archive that holds what memory cannot

  • The origin story: a diary, a chance encounter with a name on a flyer, and an unpaid apprenticeship on A Different World that changed everything

  • How she both opened doors and changed the landscape by creating Living Single

  • Why she finds equal satisfaction in shepherding other people's shows to air

  • Her 21-year Showrunner Training Program with the Writers Guild, and why she's spent decades making a way for the next generation

  • What she looks for when she mentors someone

  • Her philosophy on legacy: not just what you leave, but how you leave people

Key Takeaways

→ Turn frustration into fuel. Yvette describes this as her default modality. When the industry didn't welcome her, she didn't wait for permission. She built the table herself and made sure there were chairs for others.

→ Art is a living archive. The stories we tell today will inform people decades from now about who we were, how we moved, and why. Yvette takes that responsibility seriously in every project she touches.

→ Know your why before the slings and arrows come. When mentoring, Yvette looks for drive, purpose, and clarity of why. Those are the people who, like her, have the resilience when tripped to always get back up.

→ Legacy isn't just what you leave. It's how you leave people. After 40 years in the industry, Yvette measures her impact not in credits or awards but in the lives and careers of the people she has mentored, whose work and lives will outlive her.

→ Operate from abundance, not scarcity. Yvette believes there's opportunity for everyone. Her role has been to be a conduit to access, and she takes that charge as seriously as any producing credit.

→ Give yourself credit every single day. Small goals are building blocks for daily joy. You don't have to be striving every moment. Wake up with joy, accomplish something, and aid others.

About Yvette Lee Bowser

Yvette Lee Bowser is an award-winning writer, producer, and showrunner best known for the groundbreaking sitcom Living Single.

At 27, she made history as the first and youngest  Black woman to create and run a primetime series. She began her career on A Different World and made her mark shepherding more than 10 series onto the air – with additional credits including For Your Love, Half & Half, black-ish, Dear White People, Run The World and UnPrisoned. 

A recipient of the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award, Bowser co-founded the WGA Showrunner  Training Program and chairs the Institute for Diversity in the Arts board at Stanford. For over four decades, Bowser has influenced culture drawing from personal experiences and capturing life on-screen with clarity, authenticity, compassion and a healthy dose of humor.

About Monica Lyle

With over 30 years as an executive coach, Monica is on a mission to help more people do what they love and love what they do. Each episode of Mode to Joy features a guest who has found a way to make their life's work feel like their life's calling.

Monica and the Renewal Fuel executive coaching team work with leaders and professionals who are ready to get clear on what is next. The first step is simple: book a Spark Session. It’s a focused conversation about your career, your goals, and what it might look like to move forward with real intention.

Book your Spark Session here.

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