The SheVerse and Tara project

Seeing stories from the Inside

Twenty years ago, I found myself behind the monitors of a television set, script in hand, checking that each moment made sense, noticing the silences and the decisions about what was not being told. Every story carried a shape, a logic, and an implicit authorial point of view. But often, it wasn’t my own. It wasn’t the perspective of women, or of people whose voices were historically absent from the frames we watched.

That experience shaped how I think about stories: they aren’t neutral. They are decisions in motion. And today, as the founder of Screen Innovate Lab, we are designing a portal that gives women more control over the stories they tell and leave for the future.

Linear Narratives to platformed stories

For decades, storytelling was largely linear. Television, cinema, and stage had a single direction: the story flowed from author to audience. The people making those decisions were mostly men, often operating within similar cultural frames. Even when women appeared as characters, few had authorship behind the camera.

The move to digital platforms promised democratisation: anyone could upload, share, or broadcast their story. In practice, algorithms now mediate what audiences see. Recommendations reward engagement, clarity, and often favour stories shaped by dominant, already-visible voices. Women creators appear, but often without editorial power; the broader system still privileges certain perspectives over others.

Observing gaps, not casting blame

I have learned that these patterns are structural rather than personal. They reflect historical tendencies, institutional inertia, and unexamined assumptions in technology design. My curiosity has always been: How can we design systems that encourage diversity, amplify marginalised voices, and preserve creative freedom?

At Screen Innovate Lab, one of our central guardrails is to build prototypes with AI that augment rather than replace human creativity. The idea is simple: provide tools for ideation, character development, and narrative exploration while keeping authors firmly in control. Provide a safe and inclusive space for all to engage and view She Stories told by real-world women. 

At Screen Innovate Lab and Studio, we want AI to be a collaborator that listens, suggests, and adapts, not one that quietly dictates what a story “should” be.

Why women’s perspectives matter

Globally, women are still underrepresented in creative leadership. Whether in film, TV, or interactive media, women create a small fraction of the stories that are widely distributed. This absence is not only about fairness; it shapes the cultural imagination itself. Stories influence how communities perceive themselves and others. They help us find place and identity. When half of humanity’s perspectives are underrepresented, the world is only half discovered. It is is like the myth that humans only use half of their brain, when in fact they every part of it daily, just not all at once.

The balance of the body, brain, and senses gives us an overall sensory experience. Like the brain, culture and society also need a balance in perspective for the benefit of the world. The push to create an environment for diverse stories to come to light also brings the same balance across all genders. We do not live in isolation, and an imbalance in one affects us all.  

Our goal is to provide women with tools to explore story worlds in ways that have been historically constrained, from narrative arcs and character relationships to complex cultural contexts.

Designing with the audience

We’ve been approaching the system design with the following questions:

• How can an AI understand multiple story grammars without imposing a single cultural lens?
• How do we create a system that amplifies female voices, rather than replacing?
• How do we offer women a safe space to share their authentic voices and narrative stories?

It is a design philosophy as much as a technical challenge.

I began my career ensuring that stories made sense from shot to shot. Now I am building tools to ensure that stories themselves, across media, cultures, and platforms, reflect the richness of the voices creating them.

I do not believe that AI or any other technology is the answer in isolation; it is a mirror. The stories we teach it to understand will shape the stories we tell next. By centring women’s authorship, we hope to expand the circle of storytellers and broaden the imagination of audiences everywhere.