Award-winning Ugandan-Australian Suzan Mutesi is the rising multi-hyphenate to be inspired by, Suzan has a lot going on, she is style icon, actress, author, model, singer, producer, activist and all-round creative powerhouse and she is devoted to inspire the next generation to be unapologetically themselves.

A fearless and unique personality, Suzan has grown from humble beginnings in her home country of Uganda, all through becoming a household name in the Australian creative industries and her breakthrough in the international scene, gracing the pages of Vogue France and Australia and becoming an iconic face of Bonds. A trained and talented actress, Suzan is set to be the lead in an upcoming Hollywood movie, which details are still under wrap alongside a Best Actor’s Oscar-winner, she has also just finished filming a cameo role in ‘Anyone But You’, the Sony R-rated Hollywood rom-com starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, with Easy A Golden Globe-nominated writer, director and producer Will Gluck behind the camera.

As a published author, Suzan’s first book, ‘Unapologetically Black: Afro Sisters’, released in 2020 received critical acclaim by global cultural barometer Vogue which praised the book for “transforming stories of personal discrimination and hardship into a book younger generations can turn to and derive comfort from”. Her journey as an author could only develop with her own autobiography The Immigrant That Found Her Unapologetic Voice’, in which she tells the tale of how she found her own unapologetic self, raising important discussions on racism, friendships, trauma, relationships, church culture and more, while providing advice and comfort for other people of colour who can identify with her experiences.

Her Fashion career has seen Suzan winning the Fashion Icon of the Year award at the Afro-Australia Music And Movie Awards, she also received the Best Fashion Contributor In The Diaspora in Uganda. Fashion Designer Award from Celebrate African Australians at the Fashion Aid Forward. As a fashion designer she dressed and styled some of the biggest Australian models and celebrities, as well as Kelly Rowland for The Voice Australia. As an influencer and model she appeared in campaigns for iconic brands like Fenty and Nike, among others. While on her podcast, ‘Unapologetically You’, she interviews people doing noteworthy things in the community and inspiring others.

Suzan Mutesi was born in Uganda after the dictatorship of Edi Amin, at that time the parties of Obote and current president Museveni were fighting for power, while rebels terrorized civilians, as a child she recalls rebels violently banging at her house, Suzan parents would hide all their twenty kids under ground in a hole under their house for safety until the banging would stop. Raised in a five-bedroom house inhabited by 20 people, ruled over by her polygamous father she recalls how; “in Ugandan culture, women were raised to have no voice, valued only as domestic servants”. Suzan took refuge in creating her own world, one in which she replaced Barbie dolls, which her parents could not afford, with dolls made of banana plantation fiber, “I would use scraps of fabric to design their outfits,” she recalls.

Educated in a prison-like boarding school until she was eleven years old, Suzan moved to Australia to join her mother. The 21st of June 2002 was the first birthday Suzan spent with her: the day they reunited in Sydney. A young girl growing up in predominantly white westernised culture was challenging, “We were the only black family on my block, the only black girl in my class and school,” she recalls. Like many Africans, her family came to Australia seeking safety and a better future. Yet assimilation wasn’t always made easy, Suzan faced racist microaggressions from her classmates, “during the holidays my Aussie friends easily got jobs in fancy retail shops and franchises like McDonald’s but I struggled to get any jobs,” she explains.

With no previous work experience in Australia the only place she found the opportunity to work during high school holidays was at a printing factory which printed fashion magazines; “in the dusty, rusty tiresome long graveyard shifts at the factory on breaks, I would scan through the ink printed pages of magazines and I would envision myself being influential, with a voice, and one day be a black woman on a Vogue magazine cover”.

Graduating top of her Art classes, Suzan applied for design school at Raffles KVD in North Sydney, when she was approached by an agent searching for Black actors and models, she joined the agency while studying for Bachelor Of Visual Communication and majoring in Fashion Design. Suzan agent encouraged her to enroll in The National Institute of Dramatic Art course during school holidays to hone her acting skills. After completing a certificate in Film and Theatre and interning for some of the most important Australian fashion houses, Suzan started her own fashion business.

Suzan’s first step in Hollywood was a cameo appearance in the Marvel Studios American superhero film ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ in 2021. While her acclaimed supporting role in the Australian independent movie ‘Moon Rock For Monday’ in 2021, gained her widespread recognition among movie critics, the movie was nominated for an AACTA Award in 2021 for Best Indie Film by the Australian Academy of Cinema Television and Arts and released the film appeared in some of the most important international film festivals including Beijing International Film Festival, Zurich Film Festival and Schlingel International Film Festival in Germany where it won both the FIPRESCI Jury Award and the SLM Top Award.

On the back of a busy year in 2022 which saw Suzan Mutesi join the cast of the reality TV show ‘The Challenge Australia’, as well as star alongside Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning English actor Jane Seymour OBE in ‘Ruby’s Choice’, which premiered at the 37th Santa Barbara International Film Festival where it was Nominee Best International Feature Film, Suzan made her Netflix debut in the ‘Heartbreak High’ reboot playing the role of a DJ. Suzan is set to star in her first lead role starring opposite Cuba Gooding Jr. in the upcoming Hollywood action-crime film ‘Irrationale’, and in a cameo appearence in ‘Anyone But You’, the Sony R-rated Hollywood rom-com starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, with Easy A, Golden Globe-nominated writer, director and producer Will Gluck behind the camera.