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Alexis K. Owens is the Founder and CEO of AKONIC Entertainment, an independent multimedia company developing original, franchise-ready IP across television, film, animation, digital media, and publishing. A actress, writer, producer and director, with over fifteen years in entertainment and media, Owens built AKONIC from the ground up, originating, writing, casting, directing, and producing it's flagship project, No One Like Us, a digital sitcom.
Before founding AKONIC, Owens spent over a decade moving through every dimension of the industry. She began her career at seventeen, signing with her first talent agency and appearing in the NBC series Revolution and the Swirl Films production Frat Brothers as a background actor and later appearing in many Independent films. A meeting with Oscar-winning actor Mahershala Ali at seventeen set the course of her journey when Ali encouraged her to use education as her pathway into the industry and "learn everything she could."
Owens went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications with a concentration in Broadcast Media for film and television from North Carolina Central University, where she created, directed, wrote and hosted The Grid Exclusive, a student-led campus show spotlighting overlooked narratives within the Durham community and highlighting the student experience along with other students she rallied from the schools television studio. That work led to hosting LeVelle Moton Presents: The Connect, a PBS series featuring rapper and activist David Banner and Grammy Award-winning producer 9th Wonder.
Her career expanded into multimedia journalism, including a role as Multimedia Specialist and Joirnalist at Duke University, where she created culturally relevant stories connecting academic spaces to real-world communities. She also spent years teaching Directing digital media and teaching English literature at the School of Arts and Technology her mother, Dr. Stacey Owens-Howard founded, developing a deep understanding of storytelling, audience psychology, and how narratives connect people across age, background, and experience.
Owens appeared as in actress in Grief, an award-winning short film that earned multiple honors, including a second-place award at PVIFF, an Oscar-qualifying festival, and a Gold Award for Best Ensemble Cast at the Independent Shorts Awards. Owens also worked under the direction of Emmy-Award winning director Micah Byler on a commercial project submitted for consideration of The Capital Emmys.
In 2023, after three consecutive years auditioning and training for the most competitive MFA acting programs in the country, including Yale, Juilliard, NYU, and Brown University, where she advanced to a second round offer conversation, Owens made a deliberate decision to shift from talent to architect, founding AKONIC Entertainment to build the space she never had access to and to create a home for the artists, directors, producers, and writers who have the vision but need a new option.
