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Deborah Calla, originally from Brazil, is a writer, producer, and activist. She founded Calla Productions, an international company specializing in the production and development of feature films, television shows, commercial campaigns, web content, and social activism projects both in the US and internationally.
Since 2010, Deborah has championed increased disability representation in media. She serves as co-CEO of the Media Access Awards (MAA), an organization established by Norman Lear, and produces its annual prestigious award ceremony honoring disability inclusion in entertainment. Past hosts and presenters of the MAA include Jimmy Kimmel, Marlee Matlin, Nyle DiMarco, Bruce Cohen, Norman Lear, Danny Woodburn, Frank Marshall, Jamie Brewer, Shonda Rhimes, William H. Macy, Howie Mandel, Selma Blair, Andy Sandberg, Whoopi Goldberg, Michael Keaton, and Jane Lynch.
In 2019, alongside Allen Rucker, her MAA partner, Deborah co-authored a best-practices guide for hiring disabled writers, supported by the WGA’s Writers with Disabilities Committee and Easterseals Southern California. She also collaborated with The Black List to launch the first-ever Disability List, featuring the top 10 unproduced scripts with disabled lead characters.
From 2004 to 2018, Deborah chaired the Producers Guild of America Diversity Committee, where she developed numerous programs to educate, promote, and create opportunities for diverse talent, including the highly successful Producers Guild of America Diversity Masters Workshop.
Deborah co-wrote and produced the feature film A Beautiful Life, starring Dana Delany, Jesse Garcia, and Angela Sarafyan. Her production credits also include the comedy feature Dream House with Justin Theroux, the drama Lehi’s Wife featuring James Green and Kathryn Joosten, and co-producing Lost Zweig with Rudiger Vogler and Ruth Reiser. Additionally, she served as the Brazilian producer for You Got Served: Beat The World, released internationally by Sony.
In television, Deborah produced a half-hour TNT program commemorating Brazil’s 500th Anniversary, a Latino artist biography series for HBO Latino, and a human-interest and Hollywood stories series for Germany’s SAT 1. She produced the first English-language broadcast of Brazil’s carnival for the Travel Channel alongside seven-time Emmy winner Terry Jastrow for Globo International Television. Narrated by Oscar-nominated actor Anne Archer, the two-hour special led to a subsequent production the following year.
She wrote the movie-of-the-week Romeo & Juliet Redux for Freeform, a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic love story, and developed the series bible adaptation of Stolen Loves, Brazil’s highest-rated series, for the American market.
Deborah has published three books through Putnam and Scholastic and contributes to The Huffington Post. She has lectured at the American Film Institute (AFI), USC Film School, Hollywood Brazilian Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Los Angeles Latino Film Festival, and the Produced By Conference, the largest producers conference in the US. She frequently lectures in Jordan, Taiwan, and Brazil, teaching writing and producing to filmmakers. Deborah is a sought-after speaker on advancing inclusion of underrepresented communities.
