“A country boy with big city dreams.” Stephen Love Jr. grew up in the rural towns of Filbert and Bennettsville, South Carolina. Paired with the entrepreneurial spirit of his grandfather’s produce stand, Love’s passion for cinema led him to start an event videography company in 6th grade. But by high school, he realized that narrative film and television producing was his destiny. As a business major at Morehouse College, Love founded the Morehouse Filmmakers’ Association, for which Spike Lee is the honorary adviser. This became the precursor to the now thriving Cinema, Television, and Emerging Media Studies (CTEMS) degree program at Morehouse. In the meantime, Love supplemented his business studies with practical experiences outside of school. He was the associate producer for a 2009 documentary called the PBS documentary Jail, No Bail that received an Emmy-nomination for the southeastern region. In 2010, Love produced Saved, which was accepted into the 2010 Cannes Film Festival’s short film corner. Over the next few years, he continued to “learn by doing” while working for Rainforest Films, Sony Pictures, The Mark Gordon Company, Martin Chase Productions, DisneyABC, NBCUniversal, and HBO Films. Love is a graduate of the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC. He and his partner Blake Pickens are currently producing Steven Caple Jr.’s first feature film, The Land, and another film with Nina Yang Bongiovi and Forest Whitaker’s Significant Productions called The Friendship Nine.