Photo courtesy of Terrell Green
Multiplatform storyteller and community advocate Terrell Green empowers LGBTQ+ youth through mentorship that encourages them to find their own voices.
Terrell Green’s career spans theater, media production and public communications—all guided by a passion for storytelling and expertise refined in USC’s online Master of Science in Digital Media Management (DMM).
Alongside his multifaceted career, Green volunteers as a mentor with Rainbow Labs, where he helped launch the nonprofit’s first digital storytelling program for LGBTQ+ youth. That work earned him the youth-service organization’s Light of the Future Award at its 2025 Violet Visionary Awards Ceremony.
The Violet Visionary Awards honor mentors and community leaders who embody empowerment, resilience and joy. For Green, the Light of the Future Award reflects years of the kind of dedication that rarely makes headlines yet benefits lives.
Photo courtesy of Terrell Green
“It’s been one of the most meaningful roles I’ve held—seeing firsthand how mentorship can create belonging, empowerment and visibility,” Green says. “Mentorship is how we build legacy, protect joy—and make sure the next generation of queer leaders can thrive out loud.”
His connection to Rainbow Labs began in 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when isolation weighed especially heavily on sexual and gender minority youth. His efforts to expand the organization’s outreach for the digital age quickly deepened into one-on-one mentorship and a role on the organization’s Youth Leadership Council.
Green’s involvement with Rainbow Labs echoed the reasons he applied to the DMM program. Experience showed him that skills in data, long-distance collaboration and new media had become more crucial than ever. That knowledge was hard-won: When the pandemic moved everything online, he watched youth enrichment programs he helped build go dark. He had spent a decade in arts education, designing theater workshops that strengthened literacy and opened spaces to talk about public health.
Virtual learning would have widened the door—if only the students he served could enter. Instead, however, “our programming ceased because families didn’t have digital access,” Green explains. “That was the first time I really learned what the digital divide meant.”
He became determined to do whatever he could to help bridge that divide. Rainbow Labs offered a means to help achieve that.
Green vividly recalls the moment he realized how needed he was. A Rainbow Labs staff member mentioned that some youth had specifically asked for a mentor who looked like him. “That mattered,” he says. “And I understood why.”
Over time, his mentees have confided in him during pivotal transitions—from coming out to navigating the uncertainties of high school. Green provides support by relating their experiences to his own story, trusting young people to find the path that feels right for them.
Rainbow Labs’ model, which brings young people into spaces where they are not always represented—NFL studios, the Frito-Lay factory, creative workplaces across Los Angeles—resonates deeply with Green’s own upbringing. He grew up in Philadelphia, where free public-school arts programs introduced him to theater and connected him to mentors who changed the course of his life. “People poured into me,” he says. “I try to do the same.”
Now based in Los Angeles, Green works on the communications team at the State Bar of California, doing public-facing digital work. He’s also CEO of 267 Productions, which creates video and social content for brands and organizations.
That humanity also remains vital to true creativity. Green, who trained in theater as an undergraduate, remains dedicated to creating new work. His newest project is a cycle of poems and songs about Harriet Tubman that grapples with the question of how we humanize an icon.
During research, he discovered details that revealed the woman behind the legend and began shaping a rap-infused musical that tracks Tubman’s courage through a personal lens. Early readings in Los Angeles drew audiences from many backgrounds, and a concert version followed. A fully produced version is being planned to premiere at Long Beach Playhouse for Martin Luther King Jr. weekend in 2026.
Photo courtesy of Terrell Green
Green’s love of storytelling dates back to his youth and a middle-school auditorium in Philadelphia. Cast as an understudy in Guys and Dolls Junior, the kid-friendly version of the classic musical, Green stepped in to rehearsal one day to sing “Luck Be a Lady” and felt the room fall silent. The director’s sudden and enthusiastic applause, followed by that of classmates, marked something Green had been seeking but couldn’t articulate: belonging. Years later, that moment still resonates. And when the original lead left the production, Green seamlessly filled the role.
As an in-person art form, one of theater’s most powerful aspects is its sense of community—something long important to Green and which drives his service at Rainbow Labs. A former USC Black Alumni Association (BAA) scholar, he is also a founding member of BAA’s Young Professionals Council, serves on the USC Lambda LGBTQ+ Alumni Association, and is an ambassador for the DMM program and volunteer mentor for USC Annenberg’s “Seeing Me in Media” program.
“These roles allow me to continue paying forward the mentorship and access that shaped my own journey,” he adds.
No matter what the medium—stage, video or online communications—Green remains dedicated to using the power of storytelling to connect people, help them feel seen and apply insights to actions that improve communities. Now, with experience built through USC’s online master’s, he blends the performing arts with public service to deepen civic understanding and help open doors for the underserved.
“I use what I learned through USC nearly every day,” Green says. “The program gave me the confidence to recommend a path, the tools to back it up and ways to build connection across distance.” The results, he adds, “are helping people find their stories, tell them and use those stories to guide public action.”