Few success stories are quite as successful as Ava DuVernay’s.

The 46-year-old director had a successful career in public relations before, at 32, she switched gears. This was the year she picked up a camera for the first time and toyed with the idea of becoming a filmmaker.

Eight years later, she won the Best Director award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for Middle of Nowhere, an independent movie DuVernay wrote, produced and directed about a nurse processing her husband’s prison sentence.

Today, DuVernay is the first black woman to direct a movie with a budget in excess of $100 million (A Wrinkle in Time). She is the first black woman to direct a DC superhero movie (New Gods). She just signed a massive deal with Warner Bros studios to produce and create television content for the network, a deal that is reported to sit in the “high eight figure range”, according to The Hollywood Reporter. She has been nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar.

Ava DuVernay’s powerful message for women dealing with rejection