Lena WaitheSpeaker and Booking Agent Information

In 2014, Variety named Waithe as one of its "10 Comedians to Watch". In August 2015, Showtime network commissioned a pilot for an upcoming series, The Chi, written by Waithe and produced by Common, which tells a young urban African-American man's coming-of-age story. As the show’s creator, Waithe’s goal was to bring her experience growing up on the South Side and experiencing its diversity to craft a story that paints a more nuanced portrait of her hometown than is typically shown.

Waithe was cast in Master of None after meeting creator and lead actor Aziz Ansari who, with Alan Yang, had originally written Denise as a straight, white woman with the potential, according to Waithe, to evolve into one of the main character's love interests: "For some reason, [casting director] Allison Jones thought about me for it, a black gay woman." Ansari and Yang rewrote the script to make the character more like Waithe: "All of us actors play heightened versions of ourselves." She said, "I don't know if we've seen a sly, harem pants-wearing, cool Topshop sweatshirt-wearing, snapback hat-rocking lesbian on TV." She also said, "I know how many women I see out in the world who are very much like myself. We exist. To me, the visibility of it was what was going to be so important and so exciting."

In 2017, Waithe and Ansari won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for the season 2 episode "Thanksgiving". She became the first black woman to win the award. Waithe described the episode as based on her coming-out experience as a lesbian. In her moving Emmy speech, she sends a special message to her LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual) family discussing how "The things that make us different—those are our superpowers.". She ends her speech by recognizing her journey as a minority saying "thank you for embracing a little Indian boy from South Carolina and a little queer black girl from the South Side of Chicago.” She is also developing an autobiographical drama series called The Chi. Out Magazine named Waithe the Out100: Artist of the Year on November 8, 2017.