Raven Cassell

Logline: NOT FOR PROFIT is an hour-long, darkly comedic workplace drama about a fictional NGO in Ghana, West Africa. Think a West African White Lotus meets the Breaking Bad character arc.

Ama, a twenty-five year old, double Ivy League Ghanaian-American fresh out of grad school, moves back to Accra with a golden heart and the will to make a difference in international development– particularly at home in Ghana. She’s a sharp strategist and a natural pan-African, only she’s book smart but not street smart… yet. After landing her dream role at the best NGO, Africanize, the veil is pulled back on the world of international aid, she comes to learn that this is just a bed of corruption. Who does Ama become as she navigates and negotiates the moral dilemmas tied to money and power?

It's serialized with soft procedural elements. Each season, the characters are planning and executing major projects at Africanize. The story follows this NGO; its team, the community it serves and the agencies they engage with. It connects different classes of people, asks critical questions of the non-profit industrial complex and illustrates the illusion of saviorism. This is the story of good and evil.

Is corruption an inherent byproduct of power?

Bio: Raven Cassell is a Liberian-American artist and dramatist based between NYC and West Africa. She describes herself as an Africanist Storyteller; making work dealing with African continental and diasporic concerns, affairs and themes — centering African storytelling methodologies, ideologies and technologies. Aesthetically sweet in quality, Raven’s work is a pan-African dance shared between futurism and traditionalism. It is a meditation on, a shrine of and a portal to: global black culture. Raven writes TV, film and play transmuting her affinity for culture studies into prismatic worlds.

While attending NYU, Raven was a 2024 Forge NYC fellow where she developed, Africa House, the global arts organization she is founding. Raven was then awarded the 2024 NYU Chamgemakers Fellowship that supported her graduate internship at Black Rock Senegal, the global arts foundation in Dakar. The following year, she won the 2025 HEAR US award for Creative Research at Tisch to develop her book project, Africanist Storytelling: The West African Way of Dramatic Art. She was a Dramatist Guild Foundation, 2023 Catalyst Fellowship Finalist for her work with Africa House. 

Now, Raven is conducting Africanist Storytelling research in Accra, Ghana and designing a course of the same title.

Check out Raven's personal website and contact here!