ABOUT US
start-up staff includes a core staff of the President/Executive Producer and Director, Sponsorships & Investor Relations, operating on a full-time basis leading up to and during production and training cycles. An outreach coordinator and a workshops coordinator, working on a freelance contractor basis, complete the core staff team.
Other professionals that provide additional services as needed include a director of production, box office/front-of-house consultant, bookkeeper, accountant, legal counsel, and insurance broker.
Until Spirit & Image Entertainment has its own home (part of its five-year plan), we will present by special arrangement with other Bay Area theater facilities in Richmond, Oakland and Berkeley CA.
The Spirit & Image Entertainment
Florene Wiley, President /Executive Producer
Florene “Flo” Wiley currently works as the Operations Manager at Snap Judgment Studios in Oakland CA. Reporting directly to the owner/executive producers of this nationally acclaimed podcast production studio (Snap Judgment, Spooked), recently acquired by KQED Inc., Flo is primarily responsible for finance, administration, human resources, production contracts, retreats, and annual events.
A veteran arts administrator, she has worked with non-profit arts and social service organizations such as the Apollo Theater (Director of Marketing & Communications), Scholastic Inc. (Manager, Employee Relations), Uniworld Advertising (Account Executive), the City College of New York (Instructor, Public Speaking), and the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce (Producer/Writer, HarlemWeek 45) among others.
An award-winning actress, she has performed internationally, trained at the Negro Ensemble Company, the NY Mime Theatre, the Richard Allen Center for the Arts; acted at Woodie King Jr’s New Federal Theatre, the Public Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, San Francisco’s Buriel Clay Theatre, and directed her own productions at Mills College Lisser Theatre, the Julia Morgan Theatre, Memorial Baptist Church of Harlem, and Reader’s Theatre at Allen Temple Baptist Church. She has a BA in Drama from California State University, East Bay and has been teaching acting since 1977. Flo received an AUDELCO Best Supporting Actress Award in 1970, for which she tied with actress Pamela Poitier.
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Her career in radio started in 2001 as producer/host of Black Beat New York: The Flo Wiley Show broadcast weekly on WHCR-FM (Harlem Community Radio) and from 2016 to 2019 she producer and hosted Black Beat Bay Area on KGPC-FM (Peralta Community Radio). A popular host/emcee she was the “god-voice” for the 50th Annual AUDELCO Black Theatre Awards at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards at both the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall, and for the past 5 years has hosted Rhonda Benin’s Just Like A Woman: Celebration of Bay Area Women in Music at Freight & Salvage.
She was born in Little Rock, raised in Oakland, grew up in New York City, and lived in Lagos, Nigeria for two and a half years where she worked as Managing Director of Latola Films Ltd.
Florene relocated back to the Bay Area in August 2015, and settled in Richmond CA. In February 2018, she was appointed to the Richmond Arts and Culture Commission where she served as Chair from 2020-2022. She remains active in the Richmond arts community as a member of the Richmond Arts Initiative. In July 2022, she started her own company, Spirit & Image Productions, to produce theatre celebrating the Black cultural aesthetic, and train performers through the Actors Workshop with Flo Wiley.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
CLIENTS
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Operations Manager, Snap Studios/KQED
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Director, Marketing & Communications, Apollo Theater
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Manager, Employee Relations, Scholastic Inc.
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Account Executive, Uniworld Advertising (1st Acapulco Black Film Festival)
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Producer/Writer/Host, HARLEM WEEK 45
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Coordinator, Kwanzaa Marketplace, American Museum of Natural History
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Senior Publicist, San Francisco International Film Festival
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Marketing Manager, City of Oakland Cultural Arts
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Program Director, Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Inc.
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Amer-I-Can Foundation for Social Change
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Compagnia de Colombari
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Harlem Arts Alliance
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National Black Touring Circuit
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New Federal Theater
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Center for African & African American Art & Culture (CAAAC)
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Bayview Opera House
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Oakland Jazz Alliance
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Tatge-Haizlip Productions (US/Switzerland)
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Marin Headlands Center for the Arts
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The Art of the African Diaspora/Richmond Art Center
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Latola Films Ltd., Lagos Nigeria
