Rolake Bamgbose Whitaker is a two-time Emmy nominated filmmaker and former journalist with a passion for producing and directing compelling documentaries and short films. Her work consistently speaks to a wide range of experiences affecting people of color, and marginalized communities around the U.S. and the world. Rolake’s nuanced approach to storytelling allows her to identify and tell deeply personal stories that speak to urgent societal and cultural questions, and she is known for illuminating underreported topics with sincerity, integrity and authenticity.
She served as a director and executive producer on Supreme Models, a six-part series for YouTube Originals, which debuted in September 2022. The series chronicled the Black women who broke down barriers and transformed the fashion and beauty industries, and was inspired by Marcellas Reynolds’ book Supreme Models: Iconic Black Women Who Revolutionized Fashion. She produced the HBO feature-length documentary “The Day Sports Stood Still,” directed by Antoine Fuqua - the film followed the unprecedented sports shutdown in March of 2020 and the events that followed, chronicling the abrupt stoppage, athletes’ prominent role in the cultural reckoning on racial injustices that escalated during the pandemic, and the complex return to competition in the summer and fall.
Rolake helped launch The Weekly, an Emmy-winning original documentary series that brought unparalleled New York Times journalism to life on screen. She directed and produced “Connected to the World,” a one-hour special feature. The film premiered on FX as the most watched episode of the series, and received a 2020 News & Documentary Emmy® nomination for “Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story in a Newsmagazine.”
Rolake’s foundation in journalism allows her to bring a sensitive eye to her storytelling. She was a founding member of HBO’s Emmy-winning nightly documentary program, Vice News Tonight, and received a 2017 News and Documentary Emmy nomination for “Outstanding Feature in a Newscast,” while directing and producing features for the program, which debuted in 2016. Rolake’s passion for breaking the mold helped create a space for un-hosted segments that allowed individuals to tell their stories - in their own voices. One of those voices was Felecia Smith, a recipient of President Obama’s January 19, 2017 historic clemency action, the most commutations granted on any one day in U.S. history; her story highlighted the difficult transition between the taste of freedom, and the blunt reality that awaits those returning home from incarceration. Rolake’s work at Vice News Tonight also includes a collection of stories profiling Chicago residents and their diverse personal experiences during the city’s murder rate spike over 2016-2018.
“RIKERS”, a feature film she produced with Bill Moyers, Marc Levin and Mark Benjamin, is an unflinching portrait of individuals who spent time detained inside New York's City's Rikers Island Jail. The film premiered at New York’s prestigious documentary festival, DOCNYC, in fall 2016 before finding its home on PBS, and received the 2017 Robert F. Kennedy Award for Media Advocacy. That same year, New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced his support of proposed plans to close the notorious facility.
Rolake began her career as a journalist at ABC News, traveling extensively for the network and covering some of the largest events of the time, including visiting Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that crippled the country. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Emory University, and a Master’s in Journalism from Howard University, where she presented her thesis, “Representing Africa: African Images in African and Western Films and the Ideologies that Govern Those Images.”
Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, Rolake is a first-generation Nigerian-American living in Brooklyn, NY with her husband. She loves her Naija roots, and is a member of the Directors Guild of America (DGA), Producers Guild of America (PGA) and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.