McKenzie is an award-winning writer, director, and actor based in Chicago. Driven by a revolutionary sensibility, her work uses rich imagery and an intimate lens to explore complex characters and stories of personal transformation and liberation. She is a 2023 SFFILM Rainin Grant Fellow, and a 2021 Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Lab Fellow with her upcoming feature A Real One, currently in development. The short film and proof-of-concept of A Real One, which recently completed a nationwide film festival run, won the Gold Hugo for Live Action Short Film at the 2023 Chicago International Film Festival, long-listing the film for Academy Award consideration, and won the Grand Prize at the 2024 Midwest Film Festival Awards. Her 2018 indie feature Olympia (writer, producer) won the audience award at Geena Davis’s Bentonville Film Festival, after which she become the inaugural recipient of the festival’s See It, Be It Filmmaker Grant via NBCUniversal. She was named IFA Chicago’s inaugural Breakthrough Voice Award recipient in 2022, and received a 2023 Black Excellence award for her poetry music video First You Need A Body.She made her stage directing debut with ALAIYO by Micah Ariel Watson at Chicago's Definition Theatre. As an actor, her on-camera credits include recurring and guest star roles on the FOX series The Big Leap, ABC's Will Trent, CBS’s The Red Line, and others. Onstage she has worked with Steppenwolf and Goodman Theatres, The Second City, Woolly Mammoth, Definition Theatre, Congo Square Theatre, and others. Her poetry has been nominated for multiple awards including a Pushcart Prize, and she is a member of Growing Concerns Poetry Collective which released its second studio album BIG DARK BRIGHT FUTURES in 2020, after its lead singles premiered in AfroPunk and Essence Magazine.