Six female industry professionals have been named to Women in View’s inaugural creative leaders pilot program.

The year-long initiative is meant to help promote women as a key force within the Canadian media landscape.

It was created by Women in View (WIV), a Toronto not-for-profit that focuses on the issue of gender and cultural diversity in both Canada’s screen-based media industry and the content it produces. Funded by the Status of Women in Canada, it provides the six two-person teams with supports and resources for their individual initiatives such as social innovation, policy change and new genre-bending story telling.

It works by pairing a rising industry professional with a “sponsor” or mentor.

The participants in the program were announced Thursday. They are:

• Tracey Friesen, an executive producer with the National Film Board’s Vancouver studio, who was paired with Al Etmanski, an author and partner at Social Innovation Generation, a social-change collaborative;

• Mary Henricksen, the deputy director of Business and Rights at the CBC , who was connected with Alan Sawyer, the founder of Changing Channels Entertainment;

• Lisa Jackson, a Genie award-winning film director and documentary maker, who was paired with director and actor Kim Collier;

• Ngozi Paul (pictured), an actress, writer and producer best known for creating da Kink in my Hair, who was teamed with ABC Network Comedy VP Jamila Hunter;

• Karen Powell, Perfect Circle Productions’ partner and executive producer, who was paired with Jocelyn Hamilton, Corus Entertainment’s VP of original kids, comedy and drama programming; and

• Sadia Zama, who is the director of original program development at CBC News and the former executive director of Women in Film and Television-Toronto, who was paired with Jennifer McGuire, the general manager and editor in chief of CBC News.

This story has been updated to reflect that Sadia Zama is the former executive director of WIFT-T. Heather Webb is the current exec director.