Media businessman Byron Allen recalled a childhood spent wandering studios at NBC.
The 64-year-old shared the anecdote recently at the CAA Amplify 2025 Summit, diving into his childhood. “My mother got pregnant with me when she was 16 years old and she had me 17 days after her 17th birthday,” Allen told the crowd. “[It was] April of ’61, so nobody’s betting on a black teenaged girl and a little black baby that’s born without civil rights.”
The Detroit native said he and his mother staying in L.A. for “several years of sleeping on people’s sofas or spare rooms” as his mother got into UCLA for her master’s degree in cinema and TV production. Allen recalled his mother being rejected from jobs until one day she went to NBC. “She asked a question that changed our lives forever: ‘Do you have an intern program where I can work here for free?’ And they said, ‘No, we do not.’ Then she asked one more question: ‘Will you please start one?’ And they said yes.”
Allen said his mother couldn’t afford childcare, so he’d go with his mother to NBC. He said he’d stand there “quiet as a mouse” since he wasn’t supposed to be there. “[I’m standing there] and I’m watching this guy Johnny Carson do a show and he’s doing The Tonight Show. Then I go across the hall and I watch this guy Redd Foxx do Sanford and Son,” he explained.
“Up until that point I wanted to be like my dad, who worked at Ford Motor Company in Detroit and my grandfather who worked at Great Lakes Steel,” he added. “[Being at NBC] that changed everything.”
Allen also touched upon his own “imposter syndrome” on his journey to CEO and what skills got him there, bringing it back to his mother. “I would say the only thing we have more of than racism in this country is sexism. Sexism is off the rigor scale. Being a young boy, watching my mother deal with not only racism but sexism, I saw how strong she is and that’s instilled in me,” Allen said.
“Even though fighting her own wars, she always made it clear to me that we have to fight not just our war, but we have to fight other people’s wars,” he added.
The businessman noted that even in the early 70s, when Allen was just 10 years old, his mother told him she didn’t like the way the country treated gay people. “We’re going to stand up for gay rights,” Allen recalled his mother telling him. “I’ll fight, let’s go,” he added, getting laughs back from the audience.
Allen’s conversation was part of a larger CAA Amplify 2025 Summit, held at the Montage in Laguna Beach. The annual event brought together influential leaders from media, entertainment, social justice, sports, technology, nonprofits and other industry sectors for a day of discussions and learning. “In a moment where it feels like we may have lost faith in our leaders, what I saw here today at Amplify was true leadership,” CAA Foundation executive director Natalie Tran told the crowd as the day’s discussion ended.
“For those of us that have a seat at the table, it’s no longer the task at hand to just take up space and represent culture,” she later continued. “It’s to redesign it so that equity is not an aspiration but a standard; so that communities are no longer just included but they are centered, they are resourced and they are protected.”
In addition to Allen, Vin Diesel, Laverne Cox, former prime minister of New Zealand Dame Jacinda Ardern, CEO of Microsoft AI Mustafa Suleyman, ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero and NAACP Legal Defense Fund president Janai S. Nelson spoke on various topics.
