Today we’d like to introduce you to Tyra Clark.
Hi Tyra, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My story didn’t begin behind a camera; it began across the table from people the world had already decided not to see.
I spent more than a decade working across mental/behavioral health, youth mentorship, and reentry, alongside 15+ years building businesses in Austin. Sitting with people society had already written off taught me one lesson that changed everything: the most powerful transformation begins when someone is fully seen, and when their vision is supported by structures that allow it to thrive.
That single insight became two companies. Strange Wisdom Entertainment™ is where I do that work through story: film, multimedia, narrative. Divine Margin Consulting & Facilitation™ is where I do that same work through systems: grant strategy, business infrastructure, trauma-informed coaching for small BIPOC-owned businesses here in Central Texas. People sometimes ask which one is the “real” business. Honestly, they’re the same instinct wearing two different outfits: I’ve never been interested in scaling for scale’s sake. I’m interested in building work that’s sustainable enough to outlive me by building micro-ecosystems, training pipelines, funding architecture, and production support for people who have the vision but not always the runway.
Being named to Austin’s 40 Under 40 was humbling. The marker that actually stuck with me was quieter: watching a small business owner I coached through Divine Margin go from bootstrapping to sustainable, around the same season an at-risk young person I’d mentored years earlier showed up on one of my film sets, not as a subject, but as crew. That became my life’s work: stay long enough for people to return, not as who they were when you met them, but as who they were always capable of becoming.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It hasn’t been smooth, and I’d distrust anyone in this industry who told you it was.
The hardest stretch was learning to translate what I knew about community systems into two very different professional languages at once. Funders and boards speak in outcomes and ROI. Festivals and film collaborators speak in coverage and pitch decks. Small business owners just trying to keep the lights on need something else entirely: clarity, without the shame that so much traditional consulting quietly carries. There was a real season of feeling fluent in three worlds that rarely spoke to one another.
What grounded me wasn’t choosing one world over another; it was realizing they were all asking the same question: How do we help people build lives that last? Working with the Austin Film Society on ‘Catharsis: A Journey Through Anger’ was a turning point on the film side. On the consulting side, helping secure funding for grassroots partners like Black Leaders Collective ATX and Black Men’s Health Clinic proved the same thing in a different register: that storytelling and systems-building were never separate disciplines for me. They were always the same project, just measured differently.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
People ask what makes my work different, and I always come back to this: whether I’m producing a film or designing a funding strategy, I’m really doing the same work: building catalysts for transformation.
Through Strange Wisdom Entertainment, I specialize in offbeat, character-driven storytelling: artistic-impact promotional commercials for nonprofits, dark comedies/traumadies with heart, vérité-style mini-docs, experimental short films, and micro-series that go looking for the sacred inside small, overlooked lives. My upcoming anthology series, ‘Growin’ Up in Austin’, is the clearest expression of that yet: a love letter to this city’s textures, told by the people who actually lived it. My current project is an impact commercial with the local arts organization Equity Through Art (Founder: Dr. Sabrina Mooroogen). Their “Inner Strength, Outer Impact” signature programming is taking the world by force, and it’s something I hope all BIPOC community leaders/servants explore. It’s been a phenomenal process with a one-of-a-kind team supported by the City of Austin.
Through Divine Margin, I show up as a transformation architect for underresourced, high-impact BIPOC-led businesses, trauma-informed grant development, SOPs and scaling plans, funder-aligned narrative crafting, and hands-on implementation, not just strategy on a slide. Since 2020, that work has helped grassroots Austin organizations secure more than $500,000 in funding; resources that translated into expanded programming, stronger infrastructure, and greater community impact. I built Divine Margin because too many good businesses collapse not from lack of vision, but from lack of margin, and I wanted to build a judgment-free, culturally grounded space where “underfunded” doesn’t mean “unequipped.”
Whether I’m behind a camera or in a strategy session, the job is the same: design from the inside out, so the work doesn’t just entertain or advise; it equips.
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
Austin is a city built on uniqueness, expression, and collaboration, and I take that seriously across both of my companies. If our paths cross, I hope people leave with more than a finished project. I hope they leave with greater clarity, stronger infrastructure, and a renewed belief in what’s possible. That’s the work, whether we’re making a film together or building a funding strategy. I don’t really build films or businesses; I build the conditions for people’s dignity. Systems give that dignity somewhere to live. I’ve built my career making sure communities have both, and designing for the margins because that’s where some of the most enduring innovation, healing, and leadership begin. When those communities thrive, we all do.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tyratclark/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyra-clark
