Hallmark Channel and the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation have opened submissions for the second annual Make Her Mark scholarship, which awards one undergraduate or graduate student pursuing a directing career a cash grant and a private mentorship session with actress, director, and Make Her Mark founder Ashley Williams. The scholarship is part of a broader initiative Hallmark Channel launched approximately three and a half years ago to increase the number of women directing Hallmark original movies, and the AWM Foundation partnership formalizes that commitment into a pipeline that starts at the education level.
What Make Her Mark Is and How It Started
Make Her Mark is Hallmark Channel’s female director mentorship program, created in partnership with Ashley Williams, who is known to Hallmark fans as an actress across multiple original films and who has become equally active behind the camera as a director. The program’s stated goal is to get more women into the director’s chair through hands-on training and on-set shadowing structured to set each participant up for success. The approach is intentional rather than symbolic: mentees shadow working directors on active Hallmark productions and work toward earning their own directing credit.
The program’s track record through its first years reflects that intent. Crystal Lowe was the first Make Her Mark mentee and has since gone on to direct multiple projects. Eva L. Tavares is among the more recent mentees working through the program. Randy Pope, Hallmark’s head of original movies and physical production, has been a personal champion of the program from the start, and is credited by Hallmark Channel PR as the person who has made it possible for so many deserving women to get the yes that has often taken too long to come.
What the Scholarship Adds to the Program
The AWM Foundation partnership extends the Make Her Mark mission earlier in a woman’s career. Rather than beginning at the professional level, the scholarship targets women who are still in college, undergraduate or graduate students who are pursuing a career behind the camera. The award provides financial support plus access to a one-on-one mentorship session with Ashley Williams, giving the recipient both a practical resource and a direct connection to one of the working directors inside the Hallmark ecosystem.
This is the second year the scholarship has been offered. The Alliance for Women in Media Foundation has a documented history of scholarship recipients who have gone on to meaningful careers in the industry. Recent AWM Foundation scholarship recipients have included women who went on to work at NBCUniversal’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, land positions as sports reporters and TV news journalists, and complete advanced degrees at Columbia University’s journalism program. The Make Her Mark scholarship adds a directing-specific lane to that alumni record.
Why This Matters for the Hallmark Audience
If you watch Hallmark Channel regularly, Make Her Mark is the reason you have started seeing more women in the director’s credit over the past few years. That is not a small thing. Hallmark produces more original movies per year than virtually any other cable network, which means the number of directing opportunities it controls is genuinely significant. A program that structures access to those opportunities for women who would otherwise face a much steeper climb is worth paying attention to, and the scholarship extending that commitment down to the student level shows the initiative is being built to last rather than treated as a one-cycle experiment.
Submissions for the 2026 Make Her Mark scholarship are open now. For the latest Hallmark Channel news and programming coverage, visit our Hallmark Channel guide at fantasylandnews.com/hallmark-channel/. For all Hallmark coverage on Fantasy Land News, visit fantasylandnews.com.
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