Jasmyne Cannick

She traces her African descent mainly to Cameroon and the Bubi people of Bioko Island, Guinea Ecuatorial. In 2008, Cannick traveled with her friend actor Isaiah Washington to Sierra Leone on a humanitarian mission.

She produced Noah's Arc, a cable television dramedy about four black gay male friends living in Los Angeles which lasted two seasons. In 2007 she wrote, directed, and produced her first documentary film The Incredibly True Adventures of Sistas of the Canyon. She is a co-producer of the award-winning documentary "41st & Central: The Untold Story of the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party."

Cannick broke news that famed LAPD Det. Frank Lyga had been recorded telling a class of fellow law enforcement officers that when he looked back at his 1997 shooting of black cop Kevin Gaines, "I could have killed a whole truckload of them ... and would have been happily doing it." Lyga was working undercover that fateful day nearly 20 years ago, and Gaines was off-duty, when the two men became entangled in a deadly road-rage incident in North Hollywood. Lyga's fatal shooting of Gaines was determined by LAPD to have been justified. But it pulled at an ugly thread that led to the department's darkest hour, the Rampart scandal. Lyga subsequently left the LAPD in disgrace.

Cannick is a Southern California native having lived in Compton and Hermosa Beach. She spent her teen years in foster care before she was emancipated in 1995.

Jasmyne Cannick (born 22 October 1977) is an African-American on-air and in-print pop culture critic and race issues commentator who works in politics. She was selected as one of ESSENCE Magazine's 25 Women Shaping the World, KCET's Southern California Seven Women of Vision, one of the Most Influential African-Americans in Los Angeles Under 40, one of Los Angeles' Most Fascinating Angelenos by the L.A. Weekly and one of 40 People Under 40 by the Advocate.