Winners aside, Shayla Cowan knows pretty much exactly how Sunday's Academy Awards are going to play out. 

The Metro Detroit native is producing the telecast along with her professional partner, Will Packer. The pair is the first African American producing duo in the show's 94-year history. 

"It's our time," says Cowan, who was born in Oak Park and raised in West Bloomfield Township, on the phone last week from Los Angeles, where she's deep in the final planning stages for Hollywood's biggest night. "I think we are really going to move the needle with this one."