Our in real life salute goes to Tressa “Azarel” Smallwood. She’s a book Publisher, Movie Producer, and Business motivator. She was nominated after helping grow small businesses grow.
In 2003 after writing her first novel, A Life to Remember, she raked in over $40K in sales within two months prompting Tressa to resign from her teaching tenure to fulfill her dream of becoming an entrepreneur. Since then she’s turned her knowledge into a multi-million dollar empire. With over one hundred sixty-two titles published in print to date and even more digitally, Life Changing Books, more lovingly known as (LCB) has helped over 2,000 individuals achieve their dreams of becoming authors, movie producers, screenwriters and more.
Tressa’s entrepreneurial work both as an author and movie producer have been featured in Black Enterprise, Hip Hop Weekly, EURWeb, The Source, Rolling Out Magazine and more. Her film SECRETS was released in 2016 on BET and since that time Smallwood has soared by writing and producing ALL IN featuring ( LIL MAMA, ELISE NEAL, ROB RILEY, AND JIM JONES) which won the 2019 American Black Film Festival Best Feature Film Award. In addition, she recently Executive Produced , Sinners Wanted starring ( Lamman Rucker, Clifton Powell, and Traci Braxton) , a faith-based phenomena that is sure to change the landscape of how we view one another’s flaws and sins.
When Smallwood is not teaching others how to write and publish or reviewing scripts for her promising film catalog she is mentoring those wanting more out of life on becoming self-starters and leaders, preparing them for next level opportunities. She resides in the Washington, DC area with her family and is currently in pre-production on two new films and a tv series.
