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On this past weekend’s “Minding Your Business” on News 12+, New Jersey Film Academy Executive Director Diane Raver and Brookdale Community College Chief Strategic Initiatives Officer Joan Scocco joined Bob Considine to discuss how New Jersey’s community colleges are at the center of training the television and film workforce of tomorrow through the New Jersey Pathways to Career Opportunities Initiative.

“This is our birthright. The film business was born in New Jersey with Thomas Edison in Menlo Park,” Raver said. “There were 49 studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The first woman director, Alice Guy-Blaché, and the first woman studio owner, she invented the narrative film.

“It was all here in New Jersey when the Chamber of Commerce of Hollywood came out and coerced them to go West, but this is our birthright and we’re taking it back.”

NJBIA’s “Minding Your Business” is a weekly TV show and the winner of seven Telly Awards over the past three years, including a gold 2024 Telly in the Interview & Talk Show category.