Young Storytellers Launches Jamie Tarses Fund for LA Student Writers

By Daniel Okafor

The Jamie Tarses Fund launches tonight at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, where Young Storytellers will formally unveil the tribute at its annual fundraiser, "The Biggest Show." The fund honors the late ABC and NBC executive, who died in 2021 at 56, and will bankroll the nonprofit's writing programs in Los Angeles public schools.

Tarses earned her place in television history twice over. She rose through the ranks at NBC, then joined ABC as the first woman to head entertainment at a Big Three network (the broadcast trio of ABC, CBS and NBC). She also joined the Young Storytellers board in 2003, after involvement with the organization in its early years.

What does the fund actually support?

Young Storytellers pairs entertainment-industry volunteers and other experienced writers with elementary, middle and high school students. Together, mentor and student develop short stories that actors perform on stage at the end of each school's program — a finish line most adult screenwriters would envy.

The numbers are modest but concrete. In 2025, 786 volunteers mentored more than 440 students weekly across 39 public schools and after-school sites in Los Angeles. The organization started in 1997 with a single program at Playa del Rey Elementary School. Contributions to the fund, which will finance Young Storytellers' activities, can be made through the nonprofit's website.

What did Tarses mean to the organization?

Matt Tarses, Jamie's brother and a prominent writer-producer, said the fund was a fitting tribute. His statement has the family register in full.

"Jamie was never happier than when she was helping writers tell their stories," he said. "She had a gift for it and everyone who worked with her benefited tremendously from her guidance. In return, she bullied us into doing the same thing for the kids at Young Storytellers. Of course, it became one of the most joyful and rewarding things I've done, as she surely knew it would be. When we were trying to come up with ways to honor her memory, Young Storytellers was the obvious choice."

Jaylene Benggon Chung, managing director of Young Storytellers, framed the fund's purpose in terms of what students take from it.

"Jamie understood that the most powerful thing you can tell a young person is that their ideas deserve to be taken seriously," Chung said. "She built that belief into this organization, and it is still at the center of everything we do. Because of this fund, the kids who come through our doors will keep feeling her generosity, whether or not they ever learn her name."

That last clause is doing the real work. Endowment as quiet inheritance: the students get the benefit, not the biography.

Who runs the organization now?

The fund's launch follows a leadership change earlier this week, when Young Storytellers named Kevin Bolling as its new executive director. Bolling previously worked for the nonprofit Secular Student Alliance and, before that, headed fundraising for the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles.

Tonight's Biggest Show, featuring performances of stories selected from the school programs, doubles as the public debut of both the fund and, effectively, the new director's tenure. A network pioneer's name, a volunteer pipeline of nearly 800, and a theatre full of actors reading children's stories — Hollywood could do worse for a legacy model.