SUNDANCE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director / Writer / Producer
Adam Bhala Lough is an award winning American film director, producer and screenwriter. He made his directorial debut at the age of 23 with Bomb the System (2002), nominated for a Spirit Award for Best First Feature it put him on Filmmaker Magazine's Top 25 Indie Filmmakers to Watch list.
His follow up Weapons (2007) starred a young Nick Cannon and Paul Dano and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Adam switched gears to Documentary soon after and directed The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry, narrated by Academy Award-Winning actor Benicio Del Toro (2008) and the critically acclaimed and highly controversial, Lil Wayne documentary The Carter (2009). Despite being banned from release by its subject, The Carter has been listed among the greatest music documentaries of all time in NME, Rolling Stone, Complex and many other publications.
Adam's last film The New Radical (2017 US Documentary Competition, Sundance Film Festival) focused on Bitcoin and 3D Printed Guns and was released in theaters across the US in late 2017, landing on No Film School's Top 10 Political Docs of the Year list.
He lives and works in Los Angeles and is a frequent mentor at the Sundance Native and Latino screenwriter's labs. His work is driven by an obsession with storytelling and music as well as a deep love and curiosity for people. Making movies since the age of 16, he has dedicated his life to telling compelling stories, collaborating with interesting people and creating authentic work.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer of Cinépolis
Alejandro Ramírez Magaña is Chief Executive Officer of Cinépolis, the largest film exhibition company in Latin America, with presence in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Central America, India and the United States. He served as Mexico's Deputy Permanent Representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and as Technical Secretary of the Social Cabinet of the Government of Mexico. He has worked for the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme in the areas of poverty and human development. He co-authored "Poverty, Human Development and Indigenous People in Latin America", is Chairman of the Morelia International Film Festival and co-founded "Ambulante", a documentary film festival in Mexico. He holds a BA in Economics from Harvard University, an MSc in Development Economics from the University of Oxford and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Alex O'Flinn grew up in the Washington, D.C. area before attending Kenyon College where he received his B.A. in English. Studying literature opened up the door to the storytelling world and an interest in visual storytelling began. This interest lead Alex to pursue a M.F.A. in Film Directing and Production at UCLA where he learned extensively about filmmaking and what goes into crafting a compelling story while also beginning to understand the process of editing.
After graduating from UCLA, Alex teamed up with Ana Lily Amirpour to edit her feature film debut A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, which would have its world premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Later that year, Alex was the recipient of the Sundance Institute's Sally Menke Memorial Editing Fellowship, which allowed him the opportunity to attend the 2014 Sundance Directing Lab as an editor, as well as learn from mentors Stephen Mirrione, Doug Crise, and Dylan Tichenor throughout the year.
As an editor, Alex is inspired by bold storytelling and directors who are willing to push the boundaries of film and filmmaking. He has had the pleasure of editing films such as Autism In Love for Matt Fuller, The Bad Batch for Ana Lily Amirpour, and The Rider for Chloé Zhao for which he received an Independent Spirit Award Nomination for Best Editing.
Currently, Alex is an editor on the Netflix Series The OA. He also served as an editing advisor for Film Independent's Project Involve and Director's Lab.
After receiving a BA at Rhode Island School of Design, Alistair Banks Griffin directed the short film, Gauge, which premiered at the 2008 New York Film Festival. In 2009, he received a Cinereach grant for his first feature film, Two Gates of Sleep, which premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and won grand prize at CPH:PIX. After residencies at Berlinale and winning the San Francisco Hearst Screenwriting Prize for his script Snow The Jones, Griffin directed his Sundance Lab-supported second feature, The Wolf Hour, starring Naomi Watts.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
Amanda Kelso is passionate about technology and storytelling, and how together they can shape communities. She has spent the last 25 years serving as a creative communications and brand leader for global tech companies as well as lending her skills to non-profit organizations and startups. Amanda's tenure includes helping to foster and oversee the stewardship of Instagram's community of more than one billion people, serving as the Managing Director of Google Creative Lab, and providing creative digital leadership at Goodby Silverstein & Partners and West Ventures. While the majority of her career has been working in a creative capacity in the technology sector, early in her career she worked on television productions including Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Amanda holds a BA in Film from Columbia College at Columbia University and is an incoming DCI Fellow at Stanford University.
As an advocate for independent storytellers, in addition to being a trustee of the Sundance Institute, Amanda is also a member of the Producers Guild of America's New Media Council, and a judge for the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Work she has produced has been recognized by Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, SXSW, D&AD, Clios, One Show, The Jim Henson Technology Honor, and Communication Arts. Amanda recently co-published a public meditations project encouraging people to take time out of their busy days to meditate.
Andrew is an American filmmaker, musician, and entrepreneur. He is best known for Capturing the Friedmans, which won eighteen international prizes including the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the New York Film Critics Circle award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He is also the co-founder and CEO of Moviefone.
Anna Rose Holmer is the 2017 Independent Spirit Award Someone to Watch winner and one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film 2015. Her critically acclaimed narrative directorial debut, The Fits (Venice 2015, Sundance 2016), was released with Oscilloscope Laboratories in 2016 and nominated for Breakthrough Director at the 2016 Gotham Awards as well Best First Feature at the 2017 Independent Spirit Awards.
She produced Jody Lee Lipes's Ballet 422 (Tribeca 2014) and Mike Plunkett's Salero (IDFA 2015). With filmmaker Matt Wolf, Anna Rose co-directed and produced A Ballet in Sneakers: Jerome Robbins and Opus Jazz, a companion documentary to NY Export: Opus Jazz, (SXSW 2010 Emerging Visions Audience Award) which aired on the PBS Great Performances/Dance in America Series.
Anthony Onah is a Nigerian American filmmaker who grew up in the Philippines, England, Nigeria, Togo, and the U.S. His debut feature, The Price, premiered at the 2017 SXSW Film Festival in the Narrative Feature Competition, and was released in theaters in November 2017. Onah graduated from Harvard, where he studied biochemistry and neuroscience, then earned an MFA in film directing from UCLA. He was named to Filmmaker Magazine's list of "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in 2015, and is an alum of the Sundance Institute Catalyst Forum.
Onah is currently in development on his sophomore feature, Goliath. The project participated in the 2019 Sundance Screenwriters Lab, and was awarded the 2019 Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of Aqu
- Writer
- Writer / Director / Professor
Antonio Méndez Esparza's sophomore film, Life and Nothing More, was shot in Tallahassee, FL, during the elections of 2016. Shot with a small crew, and with a cast of all non-professional actors, the film was awarded the John Cassavetes Award in the Independent Spirit Awards in 2018. It has been named in several top ten films of the year.
His previous film Aquí y Allá premiered at Critics Week at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012, where it was awarded the Grand Prix. The film traveled around the world, including the New York Festival, Karlovy Vary, Moscow, Thessaloniki, San Sebastian, Tokyo, AFI Film Festival, Busan and Mumbai gathering a number of accolades.
Antonio is the co-founder of Aquí y Allí Films, a feature film production company with a special interest in fostering the work of relevant and personal storytelling.
Born in Madrid, Antonio earned a law degree before moving to the U.S. to develop his filmmaking career, where he earned an MFA from Columbia University. Antonio teaches film at Florida State University.
Bernardo Britto was born in Rio de Janeiro, grew up in South Florida, and graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. His animated short films, including Yearbook and Glove, have played numerous film festivals and won awards at Sundance, SXSW, AFI Fest, and others. In 2016 he premiered his debut feature film Jacqueline (Argentine) at Sundance in the NEXT section.
Beth de Araújo is a writer and director featured in Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Her feature screenplay, JOSEPHINE, participated in the 2018 Sundance Directors Lab, Screenwriters Lab and is a recipient of the SFFILM Rainin Filmmaking Grant. JOSEPHINE is being produced by RT Features (CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, THE WITCH). Araújo is currently in post production on her first feature film, SOFT AND QUIET. In 2019 Araújo performed in three sold out shows for The Moth Mainstage in theaters across the country. Her AFI Directing Workshop for Women short film, based on her Gawker essay, I WANT TO MARRY A CREATIVE JEWISH GIRL, won best screenplay at HollyShorts Film Festival. In 2017, Araújo directed 2 episodes of television for Lifetime Movie Network. Araújo has a BA in Sociology from The University of California Berkeley and an MFA from the American Film Institute. She is a certified witness advocate for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. Her mother is Chinese-American and her father is from Brazil.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Managing Director More
Betsy Wallace is the Managing Director, overseeing all aspects of finance and legal and business development for Sundance Institute. Betsy brings over 35 years of financial and leadership experience, domestic and international, to the Institute.
During Betsy's career, she has been chief financial officer and chief accounting officer of both public and private for-profit companies, including PetSmart, DSW, REC Solar (where she was also CEO), TravelClick, and American Skiing Company. While living overseas in Singapore for close to a decade, Betsy was the CFO for Citigroup's business development group for its greater Asia business, and prior to that she was the CFO of Hubbell International Inc. Betsy began her career with Deloitte & Touche CPAs.
Betsy graduated from the USC Marshall School of Business graduate program with an emphasis in finance and has her undergraduate degree in psychology from UCLA. Betsy has been involved on several nonprofit boards including Leadership California, PrimeTime Singapore, and Habitat for Humanity: Summit and Wasatch Counties. She and her husband live in Park City, Utah.
Bill Plapinger is Senior Counsel (and previously was a partner for almost three decades) at the global law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and has dedicated most of his time since 2012 to the not-for-profit sector, primarily education, as well as conservation and the arts.
Plapinger was a Fellow in 2013, and a Senior Fellow in 2014, in the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University, a joint program of five graduate schools dedicated to preparing experienced leaders to address national and global social problems.
Bing Liu is a China-born, Midwest-raised filmmaker best known for directing MINDING THE GAP, which was nominated for Best Feature Documentary at the 91st Academy Awards and won a Peabody. He was also a segment director on AMERICA TO ME, which premiered on Starz and was hailed as one of the best TV shows of the year. He co-directed ALL THESE SONS with Josh Altman, which won Best Cinematography at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and the Maysles Award at the Denver International Film Festival. Liu has been supported by Kartemquin's Diverse Voices in Documentary, a Film Independent Fellowship and Truer Than Fiction Award, the Garrett Scott Development Grant, the United States Artists fellowship, the SFFILM Westridge Fellowship, the Sundance Screenwriter and Director Labs, the Sundance Institute Asian American Fellowship and the Concordia Fellowship. He is currently developing several scripted and non-fiction projects.
Job Titles:
- Founding Member of the Director 's Advisory Group
As a founding member of the Director's Advisory Group, Blake gifted the Institute with his infectious energy and spirit. His impact on the evolution of our programs, and on each of us, will be long felt.
Brain Pickings: I am a huge proponent of interdisciplinary learning and creativity and so this blog by Maria Popova is always a good source of brainfood for me. She is constantly exploring interesting facets of humanity by making connections across science, math, literature, poetry, children's books, music, and philosophy. It can get a little academic sometimes, but she has a small companion blog that periodically posts more bite-sized pieces of inspiration and knowledge.
Used Shooting Scripts on Amazon: While writing a script, I like to keep scripts of some of my favorite movies close by. You can find a lot of great scripts on Amazon used for a couple of bucks (its cheaper, you save trees, and sometimes you find some funny marginalia from college students). Plus a lot of these published versions of the script come with incredible interviews, essays, and other insightful bits of information.
Headspace: Filmmaking will probably drive your brain crazy. I think for your sake (and the sake of your crew) you should take better care of it. This app has dozens of different categories for guided meditations for almost any situation you might find yourself in.
Bronwyn is a Sundance and SXSW Grand Jury Award-winning producer, and Independent Spirit Award-nominee for Best Feature. Her films include awards' contender and Sundance-winner Clemency (NEON/Focus), SXSW Grand Jury Award-winner Made In China (IFC), Greencard Warriors (AMC/HBO) and other narrative features, shorts and documentaries.
A champion of diverse storytellers, she is currently developing Kenyan political thriller The Czar; a feature adaptation of the YA novel When We Collided, starring Laura Marano; comedy sketch series A Brief History of Misogyny in partnership with Nina Tassler; and dramedy series Mad About Men written by Kit Steinkellner.
Bronwyn's career experience includes projects with Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros and Gracie Films, where her work in features began alongside a veteran studio line producer on such Academy Award-winning movies as Jerry Maguire and As Good As It Gets.
She is a member of BAFTA, SAG-AFTRA and the Producers Guild of America.
Writer Bruce Chatwin and his impeccably flawed worlds, his philosophical reflections
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Director of Documentary Film Program and Artist Programs More
- in 2020 As the Director
Carrie Lozano joined the Sundance Institute in 2020 as the director of the Documentary Film Program, where she works to elevate and support nonfiction filmmakers worldwide at all stages of creating and distributing new cinematic work. Lozano is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, and former lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. She joined the Institute from the International Documentary Association's Enterprise Documentary Fund, where she co-founded and oversaw the program, which supported dozens of filmmakers through robust partnerships with an emphasis on journalistic rigor, diversity, and inclusion.
Prior to the IDA, Lozano led the Bay Area Video Coalition's National MediaMaker Fellowship, and was an executive and senior producer at Al Jazeera America. Films that she has directed or produced have premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and serves on several boards including the Graduate School of Journalism's and PBS Frontline's Advisory Boards and Kartemquin Films.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
Caterina Fake is an American entrepreneur and social media innovator. Ms. Fake was cofounder of Flickr, the seminal social photo sharing site; and Hunch, which created the ‘taste graph of the internet'. They were acquired by Yahoo and eBay respectively. She is founder and CEO of Findery, a mobile app about places for social and local sharing. For eight years she served as Director and Chairman of the Board of Etsy, the marketplace of unique goods. She was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people, and received the Aenne Burda Award for Creative Leadership. Ms. Fake is a Founder Partner at Founder Collective, advises startups and new businesses, and has served on the Boards of Directors of many non-profits and startups, including Creative Commons and Creative Live, as well as on the Advisory Board of the UC Berkeley School of Information. She attended Smith College, and graduated from Vassar College in 1991. She is the cofounder of Sesat School, and serves on the advisory board of Rarecancer.org. Ms. Fake has received Honorary Doctorates from the Rhode Island School of Design (2009) and The New School (2013).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- CEO and Founder of MACRO
Charles D. King is CEO and Founder of MACRO. Formerly he was a Partner/Agent in the Motion Picture department at WME. Having joined the storied William Morris Agency mailroom in 1997, he was promoted to agent just two years later. He continues to be the first and only African American to rise from the training program in the Beverly Hills office Film/Television department in the company's 101-year history to become Partner. King was promoted to Vice President in 2004, Senior Vice President in 2006, and became a partner in 2010 after the company's merger with Endeavor.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Writer, Director
Christina Choe's debut feature Nancy premiered at Sundance in the 2018 US Dramatic Competition, where it won the Waldo Salt Best Screenplay Award. The film stars Andrea Riseborough, Steve Buscemi, Ann Dowd, John Leguizamo, J. Smith-Cameron and was produced in partnership with EON Productions' Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson.
Nancy was nominated for 2 Independent Spirit Awards and named one of the "Best films of 2018" by Indiewire, The Village Voice and the A/V Club, with Choe also being named one of Indiewire's "20 Rising Female Directors."
In 2017, Choe's docu-series Welcome to the DPRK, a personal portrait of North Korea, was acquired by First Look Media/Topic Studios and is currently streaming online.
Choe is currently developing her next feature film, an original TV series, and most recently directed episodes of Hulu's The Act, and Jordan Peele's reboot of The Twilight Zone.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Member of the Board of the Environmental Media Association
Cindy Harrell Horn is an advocate for education, public health, and the environment. She has worked with the UCLA School of Public Health in California and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico in their new effort to combat emerging infectious diseases. She has also helped secure bipartisan funding and support for the UCLA/LANL High Speed, High Volume Laboratory Network.
Horn is a cofounder and member of the Board of the Environmental Media Association (EMA), a nonprofit organization created to inspire and coordinate an entertainment industry response to global environmental crises. Horn was a founding trustee of Heal the Bay and The Archer School for Girls. She has also served as a board member for The Coalition for Clean Air, Tree People, The Natural Step, the Center for Environmental Education, the UCLA School of Public Health, and is a member of the Painting Conservatory Council for the J. Paul Getty Museum. In 1991 she was appointed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, William Reilly, to serve on the National Education Advisory Council and was awarded the State of California Legislative Woman of the Year. Horn has been honored by American Oceans Campaign, Heal the Bay, The Archer School for Girls, EMA, and the UCLA School of Public Health. Horn and her husband Alan reside in Los Angeles.
To the great shame of her parents, Crystal Liu is neither a doctor nor a lawyer. Liu graduated summa cum laude from UCLA - but with a BA in Film and Television, adding salt to the wound. Since she is single and childless, it is irrelevant that her award-winning short films have played at festivals across the world. In 2014, Liu was one of ten writers selected for the Sundance Institute's inaugural Episodic Lab. Liu has had the privilege of being a part of the RMTV family since American Horror Story: Murder House and currently serves as Writer/Producer on AHS: S8.
Daniel Kwan is one half of the directing duo known as DANIELS. Together, they've directed several award-winning music videos and commercials, as well as their first feature film, Swiss Army Man, which won the Best Director award at Sundance. Alone, Daniel Kwan has done nothing of value.
Brislin left her native Boston behind to study Art History and French at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and spent the following decade extending her student visa, immersed in the contemporary art and film worlds of Paris, Berlin, and London. She received her MFA in screenwriting and directing from EICAR, the International Film School of Paris. Now based in Los Angeles, she works as a freelance writer and producer, with a passion for historical fiction. She is currently finishing the screenplay for BELL, a creative biopic about Alexander Graham Bell told from his deaf wife's perspective, which participated in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab and was the recipient of a number of awards, including the Sundance/Sloan Commissioning Grant and the SFFILM Science in Cinema Fellowship. BELL was amongst the top 10 scripts written by women in the 2019 Nicholl competition and a finalist for the 2020 Athena awards.
Deanna is a Sundance Creative Producing, Catalyst and Film Independent Project Involve Producing Fellow.
She is currently producing Mondays by Argyris Papadimitropoulos (Suntan) starring Sebastian Stan and Denise Gough. Deanna Executive Produced the VR Installation The Sky is a Gap (Sundance 2017) and collaborated on the R29/Beachside web-series Strangers (Sundance 2017). She's produced acclaimed short films Hum by writer/director Lauren Morelli (Tales From The City, Orange Is The New Black) starring Samira Wiley (Handmaid's Tale), Rita Mahtoubian Is Not A Terrorist (2015 Tribeca Film Festival premiere), and Pinky (R29/Sundance ShatterBox Anthology). She is also producing Steve Basilone's (Community) first feature, Long Weekend, shooting this Spring.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
Prior to having children, Donna Gruneich's work focused on the financial industry. She worked for North Carolina National Bank from 1985 through 1987, trading for the Trust Division. In 1987, she relocated to New York City and worked for Oppenheimer and Company as a Convertible Bond Sales/Trader.
Donna is passionate about education and the arts. She is the past Chairman of the Board at Park City Academy and is a founding trustee of the Park City Day School Board. The bulk of her work on both boards has centered on long-term sustainability, finance and governance. She is a past board member of the Park City Institute, and she is the past Chairman of the Sundance Institute's Utah Advisory Board.
Donna and her husband, Kevin, are members of Impact Partners which brings together philanthropists and filmmakers so that, together, they can create great films that entertain audiences, enrich lives, and ignite lasting social change. Through Impact Partners, Donna has been involved with films such as Children of Invention, No Impact Man, Secrecy, Meet The Patels and the Oscar-winning films, The Cove and Freeheld. Donna and Kevin are also part of Gamechanger Films which aims to shift the gender disparity in the film marketplace by tapping into the enormous yet undervalued talent pool of women directors and providing the financing necessary to bring their work to audiences worldwide. Independently of these groups they Co-Executive Produced the Oscar nominated documentary Cartel Land and Executive Produced The Bad Kids.
One of Variety's 2018 top 10 documentary filmmakers to watch for, Dyana Winkler straddles the worlds of both fiction and documentary, believing that filmmaking is less about the genre, and more about the ability listen and tell a good story. Her most recent fiction project, a feature screenplay, BELL, has been awarded the 2016 Sundance Sloan Commissioning Grant, participated in the 2017 Sundance Screenwriter's Lab, and the 2017 SFFILM Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship. Her documentary, UNITED SKATES, which she wrote, co-directed and produced, screened at over 140 film festivals, won 15 Best Documentary and Audience Awards including at its World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. UNITED SKATES is executive produced by John Legend, features Salt 'n' Peppa, Coolio and Naughty By Nature, and is currently available on HBO.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Advisor Studio
- Writer / Director
Edson Oda is a Japanese-Brazilian writer/director based in Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of São Paulo - bachelor's in Advertising - and completed his MFA in Film and Production at USC.
His first feature film NINE DAYS - staring Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz, Benedict Wong, Bill Skarsgard and Tony Hale - premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2020 (U.S. Dramatic Competition), winning the Walt Salt Screenwriting Award.
Eimi Imanishi is a Japanese American filmmaker who grew up in France. She earned her BFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, where she majored in sculpture. Imanishi directed award winning short films Battalion To My Beat (2016), which was shot in the Western Saharan refugee camps in Algeria and won the Canal+ Award for Best International Short at Clermont-Ferrand in 2017 after premiering at TIFF; and One-Up (2016) which won Best Narrative Short at Indie Memphis and was released online as a Vimeo Staff Pick film and won Short Of The Week.
Imanishi is developing her first feature film titled DOHA - The Rising Sun with support from the Sundance Film Institute, the Film Independent, and IFP. She is a 2018 Sundance Directing and Screenwriting Fellow, a Film Independent Directing Fellow, and a Time Warner Fellow of the same year.
Job Titles:
- Writer
- Writer / Director / Producer
Raised in the quiet valley of Kahaluʻu on Oʻahu, Native Hawaiian filmmaker Erin Lau fell in love with the medium in middle school, while filming concerts and public access TV commercials for her father's Hawaiian music non-profit. She later moved to Los Angeles after receiving a full-ride merit scholarship from Chapman University, where she completed her MFA in Directing in 2018. During her education, she was selected as a Sundance Native Lab fellow for her most recent film, The Moon and The Night. After the film was shortlisted for the 2018 student BAFTAs, Erin signed with the United Talent Agency (UTA) and LINK Entertainment. Now, by day, Erin currently works as a Senior Producer-Director for Jubilee Media, a digital media company with over 4 million subscribers. By night, she is developing and writing content inspired by her family, heritage, and the socio-economic issues that plague indigenous communities.
Fred Dust is a former Senior Partner and Global Managing Director for the design firm IDEO.
Fred is currently working on a book on creativity, design and dialogue which will be released by Harper Collins in the Spring of 2020. He has been awarded a Rockefeller Bellagio Fellowship to advance his research in the same arena.
Fred Dust works at the intersection of business, society and creativity. As a designer, author, educator, consultant, trustee, and advisor to social and business leaders, he is one of the world's most original thinkers, applying the craft and optimism of human-centered design to the intractable challenges we face today. Most recently, he has been investigating new ways to ignite constructive dialogue in a climate of widespread polarization, cynicism and disruption.
Fred is a frequently requested speaker, advisor, and lecturer. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the Sundance Institute, the Board of Directors for NPR, the Board of Directors at The New School. He was a founder and trustee for IDEO.org, IDEO's non-profit that designs solutions to global poverty. He lectures widely on various topics, including design methodology, future trends, and social innovation.
Fred writes frequently for publications such as Fast Company, Metropolis, and Rotman Magazine. His books include Extra Spatial (Chronicle Books, 2003), which discusses the design of spaces, and Eyes Open: New York and Eyes Open: London (Chronicle Books, 2008), city guides that view exceptional experiences through an urban lens.
Fred holds a bachelor's degree in art history from Reed College and a master's in architecture from the School of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley.
Gigi Pritzker is an accomplished film and stage producer, businesswoman, and an active philanthropist. She founded diversified content company Madison Wells Media (MWM) in Fall 2015, in partnership with Clint Kisker. MWM aims to deliver elevated entertainment experiences to consumers worldwide across all media and devices. The company produces and distributes premium content including film, television, VR/AR content, live events and digital video through its subsidiary businesses OddLot Entertainment (OLE), Reality One, Relevant Entertainment and holdings in STX Entertainment, WEVR, Fandor and Atom Tickets. Through her role overseeing the film and television production company OLE, Pritzker has produced Academy Award-nominated drama Rabbit Hole starring Nicole Kidman; The Way, Way Back starring Steve Carell; Drive starring Ryan Gosling; the futuristic sci-fi film, Ender's Game; Jon Stewart's directorial debut Rosewater; and HELL OR HIGH WATER starring Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine and BenFoster. Pritzker also develops and produces live stage productions through Relevant Entertainment, which includes the Tony Award-winning musical "Million Dollar Quartet." Pritzker is a committed philanthropist and holds a position on the Sundance Institute Board of Trustees, is the Founder & Vice Chair of Project&, a member of the Board of the Goodman Theatre of Chicago and serves on the Advisory Board of the Harold Ramis Film School. She sits on the Board of STX Entertainment and is also a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
As producing director of the Sundance Institute, Gina manages year-round programming and engagement among the industry and artist communities, and partners with artist program leaders to integrate their artistic visions with its practical elements. She previously served as VP of film and strategic programming at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and was director of industry engagement and special programs at the Jacob Burns Film Center.
Hadi Nicholas Deeb grew up in Pittsburgh. He has written for shows such as as Blindspot (NBC), FBI (CBS), and See (Apple). He earned undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard, then went onto practice law at a large New York firm, where his clients included the new government of Iraq. Hadi then switched gears to earn a Ph.D. in linguistic anthropology from UCLA and wrote his dissertation on the shifting meaning of authorship. Another gear change led him to the Warner Bros. Television Workshop, which helped launch his writing career.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Founder of Blumhouse Productions
Jason Blum, founder of Blumhouse Productions, is a three-time Academy Award ® - nominated and two-time Primetime Emmy Award and Peabody Award-winning
Jason is an entrepreneur most comfortable at the intersection between entertainment and technology. He is CEO of his first venture, Mischief New Media, and was formerly Chief Digital Officer of MTV Networks, President of Sling Media, most recently Co-President of MySpace. He serves on the Board of Directors of MGM.
Job Titles:
- Investor
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Producer
- Vice Chair
Jeanne Donovan Fisher is a producer, investor, and philanthropist living in New York City. Fisher is president of True Love Productions, a theater and film production company in New York that she formed in 2001. Prior to the producing venture, Fisher's professional background was in strategic communications. From 1992 until 1998, she was a managing director and founding partner of Citigate SVC, a public relations consulting firm in New York. Before joining SVC, she was vice president and director of corporate communications at Morgan Stanley. She served as the company's primary spokesperson, oversaw its communications on a worldwide basis, and was responsible for Morgan Stanley's public relations, media relations, advertising, and editorial services functions.
Fisher is an active philanthropist who serves on the boards of Sundance Institute, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Environmental Defense Fund, the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard (chair), and the American Fund for the Tate Modern. She also supports numerous other nonprofit institutions, particularly in the areas of arts and education.
Fisher was born in Boston and grew up in Hudson, Ohio. Her interests include theater, film, 20th century art and design, fiction, golf, and champagne. She is the wife of the late Richard B. Fisher, former chairman and chief executive of Morgan Stanley.
Job Titles:
- Writer / Director / Producer
Job Titles:
- Writer / Director / Producer / Actor
Job Titles:
- CEO
- Member of the Leadership Team
- CEO More
Joana Vicente joined the Sundance Institute as CEO in November 2021. She is a producer and a passionate supporter of independent storytellers who has extensive experience running nonprofits that support artists.
Prior to joining Sundance Institute, she spent three years as Executive Director and Co-Head of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and the TIFF organization. Before that, she spent nearly a decade as the Executive Director of the not-for-profit Independent Filmmaker Project (now the Gotham Film & Media Institute).
Vicente has produced/executive produced over 40 feature films by acclaimed directors such as Jim Jarmusch, Nadine Labaki, Brian De Palma, Amir Naderi, Hal Hartley, Nicole Holofcener, Katherine Dieckmann, Alex Gibney and Todd Solondz.
She is recognized as a leading figure of the digital film revolution, having co-founded pioneering digital production companies Blow Up Pictures and HDNetFilms, which she launched with partners Jason Kliot, Mark Cuban, and Todd Wagner. These companies ushered in a new era of digital filmmaking that transformed the landscape of American independent film production and distribution.
Vicente was named one of Variety's Women That Have Made an Impact in Global Entertainment and Gotham 60: Most Influential New Yorkers in Entertainment and Media and has been listed multiple times in Variety's Women's Impact Report. She is a recipient of the Made in New York Award©, which recognizes those who have made significant contributions to the growth of NYC's media and entertainment industries. Vicente has taught The Business of Film at NYU Stern Business School.
Before turning her attention to film, Vicente served as a press attaché at the European Parliament for former Prime Minister and Portuguese delegate Maria de Lourdes Pintassilgo and was a radio news producer/host for the United Nations.
Job Titles:
- Emeritus Director
- Member of the Sundance Film Festival Programming Staff
John Cooper has been a member of the Sundance Film Festival programming staff since 1989 and assumed the role of Festival Director in April of 2009 after serving as the Sundance Film Festival's Director of Programming since 2003. In January 2020, Cooper stepped into the role of Emeritus Director.
His early work in theater, ranging from performance to design, took him to New York City. By chance, he volunteered at the Institute's Summer Labs in 1989 and fell in love with the process and energy of Sundance. He returned to California to become part of the Festival programming team, which at that time consisted of two people. In the Festival's early years, Cooper created the short film program and quickly transitioned into programming documentaries and feature films.
In recent years, he took the lead in developing the Institute's online presence, which has garnered two Webby Awards. As Festival Director, he oversaw creative direction of the Festival and had final decision on all films and events.
Other work includes guest curator or juror at major film festivals around the world. From 1995-1998 Cooper served as Programming Director of Outfest, a Los Angeles festival held annually in July, and until 2002 served on the Outfest Board of Directors.
As a renowned American designer and humanitarian, Kenneth Cole believes that "it is great to be known for your shoes but even better to be recognized for your soul".
A business that began 20+ years ago out of the back of a 40 foot trailer, Kenneth Cole Productions has risen to the top of American fashion. With worldwide distribution of his lifestyle brand, Kenneth Cole has been able to unite his fashion instincts and business acumen with his philanthropic convictions. As chairman to the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and a founding board member to the homeless organization HELP USA, Kenneth Cole has made it his business to fuse fashion with social action. Kenneth is also a board member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA).
He resides in Westchester, New York, with his wife Maria Cuomo Cole and their three daughters.
Keri Putnam is the Chief Executive Officer of the non-profit Sundance Institute whose mission is to discover and develop independent artists and introduce audiences to their new work. Putnam oversees the Institute's annual Sundance Film Festival, as well as its year-round programs to creatively, financially and strategically support storytelling artists around the world through signature residential labs, workshops, direct granting, strategic and educational resources, and ongoing mentorship. Since joining the Sundance Institute in 2010, Putnam has launched international Festivals and Labs in countries including China, India, the UK and Morocco, initiated new programs to support artists working in episodic content, new media, and short-forms, launched an expanded creative producing initiative to support finance, marketing and distribution of independent work, and built several new initiatives to foster outreach and diversity in independent film, including the Women at Sundance program.
Prior to joining Sundance, Putnam was President of Production at Miramax films, a division of the Walt Disney Company, where she oversaw Acquisitions, Development, Production, Post-Production and Production Finance and made or acquired films including The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will be Blood, Ben Affleck's directorial debut Gone Baby Gone, Stephen Frears' The Queen, Greg Mottola's Adventureland and Julian Schnabel's Diving Bell and the Butterfly . During her 4-year tenure at the company, Miramax films were recognized with 34 Academy Award nominations and 7 wins.
Putnam spent the first 15 years of her career at HBO, starting as an assistant in original programming and ending as EVP of movies and mini-series overseeing the creative team in this area. She supervised production of 48 films and mini-series, which collectively were nominated or won over 50 Emmy Awards, as well as numerous Peabody Awards, Golden Globes and other honors. She was also a key leadership team member in building and launching a theatrical division called Picturehouse in partnership with New Line Cinema that made and released several acclaimed films including Maria Full of Grace, American Splendor, and Gus van Sant's Cannes Palme D'or winner Elephant.
Job Titles:
- CO / / AB COMMUNITY LEADER WRITER PRODUCER
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Co - Founder and Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum
Kimberlé Crenshaw is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum, and the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School. She is the Promise Institute Professor at UCLA Law School and the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor at Columbia Law School. She is popularly known for her development of "intersectionality," "Critical Race Theory," and the #SayHerName Campaign, and is the host of the podcast Intersectionality Matters!, a columnist for The New Republic, and the moderator of the widely impactful webinar series Under The Blacklight: The Intersectional Vulnerabilities that the Twin Pandemics Lay Bare. She is one of the most cited scholars in the history of the law, and was named Ms. magazine's "No. 1 Most Inspiring Feminist," honored as one of the ten most important thinkers in the world by Prospect Magazine, and included in Ebony's "Power 100" issue.
As Chief of Staff, Kristen serves in partnership with the CEO to lead strategic planning and budgeting, organizational development, and capacity building for the Institute.
Prior to joining Sundance Institute in early 2019, Kristen was at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, where for eight years she served as a strategist and leader of initiatives encompassing brand and culture change, strategic planning, board governance, internal communications, patient experience and employee engagement. Among her many roles, Kristen helped create the Office of The President for former President Cecile Richards and served as Senior Director for the Executive Vice President & Chief Brand Officer during one of the most challenging periods in the organization's history. During her tenure, Kristen lead the design and implementation of a nationwide employee engagement and brand campaign that united organizational culture across Planned Parenthood's 56 affiliates as well as a redesign of patient waiting rooms that won the 2016 Fast Company Innovation Award for Health. Kristen also co-produced the award-winning VR experience Across the Line that premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. It was was through this project that she was formally introduced to Sundance Institute.
Prior to Planned Parenthood Kristen worked on Capitol Hill as a Director of Scheduling, and previously as a congressional campaign Field Director. She received her Bachelor of Arts with a focus on Leadership Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Richmond.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Writer
Lisa Kron is a writer and performer whose work has been widely produced in New York, regionally, and internationally. She wrote the book and lyrics for musical Fun Home, with music by composer Jeanine Tesori, which won five 2015 Tony awards including Best Musical and was finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Lisa's other plays include In The Wake, Well, and the Obie Award winning 2.5 Minute Ride. As an actor she received a Tony award nomination for her performance in Well and a Lortel Award for her turn as Mrs. Mi-Tzu and Mrs. Yang in the Foundry Theater's acclaimed production of Good Person of Szechuan. She is the recipient of Guggenheim, Sundance and MacDowell fellowships, a Doris Duke Performing Artists Award, a Cal Arts/Alpert Award, a Helen Merrill Award, and grants from the Creative Capital and NYFA. Lisa is also founding member of the OBIE- and Bessie-Award-winning collaborative theater company The Five Lesbian Brothers. She serves on the board of the MacDowell Colony and the Council of the Dramatists Guild of America.
Job Titles:
- Trustee of the Board of Directors
Lyn Davis Lear is an Emmy nominated filmmaker, celebrated environmentalist, and political activist. Shining a light on society's most urgent issues drives Lyn's creative and activist endeavors. She has produced, executive produced and advised documentary films on topics ranging from climate change, investigative journalism to new frontiers in modern medicine and Technology.
Her films include the Emmy® and BAFTA-nominated films The Great Hack, The Fight, HBO's The Vow, Fantastic Fungi: The Magic Beneath Us, and Where's My Roy Cohn? She had three films premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival: Bring Your Own Brigade, Rita Moreno: Just A Girl Who Decided To Go For It, and Rebel Hearts.
In 2014, Lyn produced What's Possible, the opening film for the UN Climate Summit with UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon that reached 127 million people worldwide. The film was a collaboration with director Louie Schwartzberg, writer Scott Burns, actor Morgan Freeman and composer Hans Zimmer. Lyn also produced a sequel, A World of Solutions.
Lyn has been a Trustee of the Board of Directors of the Sundance Institute for ten years. She also serves on the Board of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Norman Lear Center's Hollywood, Health & Society at USC, and The National Academy of Medicine's Healthy Longevity Advisory Council.
To fulfill the UCLA Grand Challenge plan for Los Angeles to be fully sustainable by 2050, Lyn serves on the Board of the LA Sustainability Leadership Council. She previously served on the President's Council of CERES and was a founder and advisor for Project Drawdown.
Lyn and her husband, Norman Lear, received the 2017 Hollywood Icon Award at the Women's Guild Cedars-Sinai 60th Anniversary Diamond Jubilee Gala. In 2016, Lyn and Norman received the Amicus Award from the International Documentary Association (IDA), and Lyn was honored alongside Vice President Al Gore by UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. In 2008, she received the Global Green Millennium Award for Entertainment Industry Environmental Leadership.
LYNETTE WALLWORTH is an Emmy and AACTA award winning Australian artist/filmmaker who frequently pushes the boundaries with new technologies. Her most recent works have been Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality immersive documentaries.
Wallworth's work has been shown at Sundance New Frontiers since 2009 when her installation Evolution of Fearlessness was invited by Shari Frilot. She has been a regular presenter at New Frontiers since that time. Wallworth received Sundance Institute New Frontiers inaugural Virtual Reality residency which partnered her with Jaunt VR and a residency at the Technicolor Experience Center.
Wallworth's work has shown at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the American Museum of Natural History, New York, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, the Smithsonian, Royal Observatory Greenwich for the London Cultural Olympiad; Auckland Triennial; Adelaide Biennial; Brighton Festival and the Vienna Festival among many others as well as film festivals including-Sundance Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, London Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, Glasgow Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Adelaide Film Festival, Margaret Mead Film Festival. Her works have been presented at the UN General Congress New York, in the UN Vienna, at the Australian Parliament and at the Washington State Department.
Wallworth's works include the interactive video installation Evolution of Fearlessness; the award winning full-dome feature Coral, with it's accompanying augmented reality work; the AACTA award winning documentary Tender, the Emmy award winning virtual reality narrative Collisions which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and the 2016 World Economic Forum, Davos and her most recent XR work ‘Awavena' which premiered at Sundance Film Festival and was in competition at the Venice Film Festival 2018.
Wallworth has been awarded an International Fellowship from the Arts Council England, a New Media Arts Fellowship from the Australia Council for the Arts, the inaugural Australian Film, Television and Radio School Creative Fellowship, the Joan and Kim Williams Documentary Fellowship and a Skoll Stories of Change/Sundance Impact Fellowship. She has been awarded a UNESCO City of Film Award, the Byron Kennedy Award for Innovation and Excellence presented by George Miller, and in 2016 she was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the year's 100 Leading Global Thinkers. She has been a frequent advisor at Sundance Labs. She is a Cultural Leader at the World Economic Forum and is a member of the World Economic Forums' Global Future Council on Virtual and Augmented Reality.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Founding Senior Director of Artist Programs
- Founding Senior Director, Artist Programs More
Michelle Satter is the founding senior director of Artist Programs at the Sundance Institute. As a key executive of the Leadership Team, Satter has been one of the chief architects of the Institute's programs since 1981 and has created and leads the programs supporting scripted storytelling. Through the Sundance signature Labs, granting and in-depth support, the programs have launched many of the ground-breaking and award-winning filmmakers of the past 40 years. Satter also created and led the Institute's international initiatives in Latin America, Europe, Japan, the Middle East, and India, and is the Executive Sponsor of the Producers, Interdisciplinary and Episodic Programs. Additionally, Satter founded and is charged with creative oversight and vision for Sundance Collab, a global digital storytelling community and learning platform. In recent years, Satter has been recognized with the Women in Film Business Leadership Award, the ACLU Bill of Rights Award, and the Coral de Honneur at the Havana Film Festival.
Job Titles:
- Director, Indigenous, DEI, and Artist Programs
Born of the Cheyenne and Mescalero Apache peoples, Runningwater was reared on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico. He has overseen the Native Lab of the Institute which has launched projects such as Four Sheets to the Wind, Sikumi, Miss Navajo, Shímásání, and Drunktown's Finest. Runningwater has also established filmmaker Labs in New Zealand and Australia, which have spawned such projects as The Strength Of Water (New Zealand), Samson And Delilah (Australia), and Bran Nue Dae
Before joining Sundance Institute, Runningwater served as executive director of the Fund of the Four Directions, the private philanthropy organization of a Rockefeller family member. He served as program associate in the Ford Foundation's Media, Arts, and Culture Program, where he built and managed domestic and global funding initiatives. Runningwater currently serves as a patron to the imagineNative Indigenous Film Festival in Toronto.
Currently based in Los Angeles, he is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma with degrees in Journalism and Native American Studies, and he received his Master of Public Affairs degree from the University of Texas at Austin's Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.
Nadine began her career as a television journalist, becoming a national reporter for the Dan Rather CBS Evening News. Prior to that, she hosted her own Toronto talk show, Take 30, and reported for The Journal, the flgship news-magazine show for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In the early nineties, Ms. Schiff was hired as VP of Michael Douglas' Sony-based Stonebridge Entertainment and produced films such as Made in America, Flatliners, The Wedding Dress and Live From Baghdad. For seven years, Ms. Schiff served on the Board of the Women's Conference headed by Maria Shriver and currently serves on the Board of The HELP Group. Nadine Schiff has a Master's Degree in Clinical Psychology and an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University. She is married to Fred Rosen, former Chairman of Ticketmaster Inc. and has one son
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Turner
Pascal Desroches is the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Turner, a portfolio of news, entertainment and animation, young adult & kids networks and businesses including CNN/U.S., CNN International, CNN.com and HLN; TBS, TNT, Turner Classic Movies and truTV; Cartoon Network and Adult Swim; and Turner Sports. Globally, Turner operates more than 130 channels in some 30 languages in more than 200 countries. Pascal is responsible for all of Turner's financial operations as well as working closely with the Turner parent company Time Warner Inc. on various financial matters, including mergers & acquisitions, forecasting and reporting. Pascal is also responsible for Turner's global technology, security and facilities organizations.
Pat Mitchell is a lifelong advocate for women and girls. At every step of her career, Mitchell has broken new ground for women, leveraging the power of media as a journalist, an Emmy award-winning and Oscar-nominated producer to tell women's stories and increase the representation of women onscreen and off. Transitioning to an executive role, she became the president of CNN Productions, and the first woman president and CEO of PBS and the Paley Center for Media. Today, her commitment to connect and strengthen a global community of women leaders continues as a conference curator, advisor and mentor.
In partnership with TED, Mitchell launched TEDWomen in 2010 and is its editorial director, curator and host. She is also a speaker and curator for the annual Women Working for the World forum in Bogota, Colombia, the Her Village conference in Beijing, and co-chairs the US board of Women of the World (WOW). She partners with the Rockefeller Foundation to curate, convene and host Connected Women Leaders (CWL) forums, focused on collective problem solving among women leaders in government and civil society.
In 2014, the Women's Media Center honored Mitchell with its first-annual Lifetime Achievement Award, now named in her honor to commend other women whose media careers advance the representation of women. Recognized by Hollywood Reporter as one of the most powerful women in media, Fast Company's "League of Extraordinary Women" and Huffington Post's list of "Powerful Women Over 50," Mitchell also received the Sandra Day O'Connor Award for Leadership. She was a contributor to Enlightened Power: How Women Are Transforming the Practice of Leadership, and wrote the introduction to the book and museum exhibition, 130 Women of Impact in 30 Countries. In 2016, she received a Congressional appointment to The American Museum of Women's History Advisory Council, and in 2019 was named to the Gender Equality Top 100 list of women leaders by Apolitical.
Mitchell is active with many nonprofit organizations, serving as the chair of the boards of the Sundance Institute and the Women's Media Center. She is a founding member of the VDAY movement and on the boards of the Skoll Foundation and the Acumen Fund. She is also an advisor to Participant Medi a and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mitchell is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia and holds a master's degree in English literature and several honorary doctorate degrees. She is the author of Becoming a Dangerous Woman: Embracing Risk to Change the World. She and her husband, Scott Seydel, live in Atlanta and have six children and 13 grandchildren.
Job Titles:
- Chief Product and Technology Officer
Phaedra Marshall joined the Sundance Institute family as Chief Product and Technology Officer in 2021, bringing more than 19 years of experience leading technology and digital product teams, developing software, and overseeing systems analysis, software implementation, quality assurance, and project management to the role. Phaedra is responsible for our vision and road map in technological development, operating in collaboration with executive leadership and overseeing strategy, advancement, maintenance, and operation for all internal systems. She also supports the technology needs of our in-person annual Festival and artist labs. Phaedra came to Sundance from Critical Mass, where she worked since 2014, most recently holding the role of Senior Vice President, Technology.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
Philipp Engelhorn founded and currently directs the film foundation and not-for-profit production company, Cinereach, which offers adaptive financial and creative support for independent filmmakers, with supported projects including Citizen Four, Cutie and the Boxer, Pariah and Beasts of the Southern Wild. Philipp additionally serves as CEO of Cinereach Films, a private film financing and investment firm. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Synergos, a non-profit dedicated to eliminating global poverty and social injustice by changing the systems that keep people in poverty. He also serves on the Founders Board of the Patrons of the Pinakothek in Munich, as well as on the boards of the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) and Artists Public Domain. Originally from Germany, Philipp graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and is currently based in New York City.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Member of the Board of Directors of Public Companies National Semiconductor
- Owner of NetVentures
Bob Frankenberg is the owner of NetVentures, a management consulting firm focused on the high tech industry. Prior to its sale in 2004, Frankenberg chaired Kinzan, a leading provider of Internet services platforms. From April 1994 to August 1996, Frankenberg was the chairman/CEO of Novell, the world's largest networking software company. Prior to Novell, Frankenberg was the corporate vice president and group general manager of Hewlett-Packard's Personal Information Products Group, responsible for HP's personal computer, server, networking, office software, calculator, and consumer product lines.
Frankenberg serves as a member of the board of directors of public companies National Semiconductor and Nuance Communications, as well as startup companies Veracity Networks, Digital Bridge, and Sylvan Source. He has served on the Utah Advisory board of the Sundance Institute since 1994 before becoming a Sundance Institute Trustee. He is chairman of the Westminster College Board of Trustees. He is a former member of the San Jose State University Advisory, Stanford Business School Alumni, America Online (AOL), Daw Technologies, Electroglas, Encanto Networks, Extended Systems, Kinzan, PowerQuest, Starlight Networks, Wall Data, and Placer Rehabilitation Industries boards.
Frankenberg is a 1974 Phi Kappa Phi/Tau Beta Pi, summa cum laude computer engineering graduate of San Jose State University. He is a SEP graduate of Stanford's Graduate School of Business. He was recently inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1965 to 1969. He and Linda, his wife of 40 years, live in Alpine, Utah.
Job Titles:
- Founder
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- President
- President & Founder More
Robert Redford founded the Institute in 1981 to foster independence, risk-taking, and new voices in American film. That year, 10 emerging filmmakers were invited to the Sundance Resort in the mountains of Utah, where they worked with leading writers, directors, and actors to develop their original independent projects.
Robert Redford is somewhat of an anomaly in the entertainment industry. Though he has been world-famous for some 30 years, he remains a highly private individual. He is an ardent conservationist and environmentalist, a man who stands for social responsibility and political involvement and an artist and businessman who is a staunch supporter of uncompromised creative expression. His passion remains to make films of substance and social/cultural relevance, as well as to encourage others to express themselves through the arts.
He is recognized the world over for the roles he has played and the projects he has directed or produced throughout a distinguished stage and film career. Believing that it is the unexpected and uncommon, which ultimately enlivens the cultural ecology of a society, Redford has nurtured more than a generation of innovative voices in independent film through his non-profit Sundance Institute and Film Festival. Harvard Business Review observed, "Sundance has become to Hollywood what Silicon Valley has been to the high-tech industry." His life-long passion for nature and issues of justice has resulted in Redford being widely acknowledged as a highly effective and dedicated political and environmental activist.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- President of Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Production
- Vice Chair More
Sean Bailey is President of Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Production and oversees all aspects of live-action development, film production and physical production for Walt Disney Pictures. Upcoming titles include Tim Burton's Frankenweenie; Oz The Great and Powerful, directed by Sam Raimi and starring James Franco, Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis and Michelle Williams; and The Lone Ranger, starring Johnny Depp, directed by Gore Verbinski and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Prior to joining The Walt Disney Studios in 2010, Bailey produced Disney's TRON: Legacy, directed by Joseph Kosinski, starring Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde, developing it in tandem with other media ranging from the Grammy-nominated, RIAA Gold-certified soundtrack by Daft Punk to a multi-platform video game and an upcoming Disney XD television series.
In 2008, he founded Idealogy, Inc., with a focus on the evolution and future of creative content, developing high-quality stories that can live across media. Bailey worked as a writer-producer under an exclusive deal with ABC Studios from 2004 to 2008, during which time he continued in his capacity as chairman and board member of LivePlanet, the production company he co-founded in 2000 with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Chris Moore. While at LivePlanet, he executive-produced the innovative LivePlanet/HBO/Miramax series Project Greenlight, nominated for three Emmy Awards, and co-created the LivePlanet/ABC series Push, Nevada with Affleck.
A 20-year industry veteran, Bailey has created, packaged and developed film, television and new media concepts for Walt Disney Pictures, Miramax, 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, DreamWorks, New Line Cinema, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., all major television networks, MSN and Yahoo. His feature film producing credits include Miramax's Gone, Baby, Gone, directed by Ben Affleck and starring Casey Affleck, Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman and Amy Ryan; Matchstick Men, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Nicolas Cage; The Core; and Best Laid Plans. His screenplay Solace, co-written by Ted Griffin, is in preproduction at New Line Cinema. Bailey's first job as a producer in the entertainment industry was developing the game show Debt for Buena Vista Television, which aired on Lifetime from 1996-1998.
Swiss Army Man: DANIELS in Conversation This next one, I don't know how educational it will be, but its one of my favorites from the Swiss Army Man press tour. We were at the end of the press tour and kind of sick of getting asked the same questions, so we asked if we could just interview ourselves. We went in trying to ask hard, weird, personal questions to see if anything interesting came out of it. It turned into an interesting post-mortem on Swiss Army Man and the process of making it. If nothing else, it makes me laugh.
Job Titles:
- Director of the Documentary Film Program
- Director, Sundance Film Festival and Public Programming
Tabitha Jackson - award-winning commissioning editor, director, producer and writer - who believes passionately in the arts as a public good, is the Director of the Sundance Film Festival. With more than 25 years of experience in the field of arts and nonfiction film, she has previously served as the Director of the Documentary Film Program at the Sundance Institute, as well as head of Arts and Performance at Channel 4 Television in London before joining the Sundance team.
In 2013, Jackson was appointed Director of the Documentary Film Program at Sundance Institute with a mission to champion the power of artful nonfiction cinema in the culture and to support a more expansive set of makers and forms. In supporting such work, she and her team encouraged the diverse exchange of ideas by artists as a critical pathway to developing an open society. Also while in the role, she launched and led a new pillar of work at the Institute - Impact, Engagement and Advocacy - with the goal of reasserting the role of the independent artist as a dynamic progressive cultural force.
Prior to joining the Sundance Institute, Jackson worked at Channel 4 to support independent and alternative voices and find fresh and innovative ways of storytelling. She executive produced a number of projects for the UK's Film 4 including Bart Layton's The Imposter, Mark Cousins' The Story of Film, Clio Barnard's The Arbor, Sophie Fiennes' The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, and Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollards' 20,000 Days on Earth. Jackson was drawn to these filmmakers, along with many others, because of their use of innovative cinematic storytelling to challenge accepted orthodoxies, and, as a result, revealing a little more of the human condition.
Job Titles:
- Co / / Ab Community Leader Producer Writer Actor
Job Titles:
- Professor at Columbia Law School
Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School, director of the Poliak Center at Columbia Journalism School and a contributing writer at NewYorker.com. He is best known for his work on Net Neutrality theory. He is author of The Master Switch, Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination, and other works, and in 2013 he was named one of America's 100 Most Influential Lawyers.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
Uzodinma Iweala is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, and medical doctor. He is the CEO of The Africa Center in New York, promoting a new narrative about Africa and its diaspora through a focus on culture, policy and business. Uzodinma is the Co-Founder of Ventures Africa Magazine, a publication that covers business, policy, culture and innovation spaces in Africa. He is a member of the Presidents Youth Advisory Group (PYAG) for Jobs for Youth Africa (JfYA) at the African Development Bank (AfDB). He has written three books: Beasts of No Nation (2005), a novel also adapted into a major motion picture; Our Kind of People (2012), a non-fiction account of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria; and Speak No Evil (2018), a novel about a queer first generation Nigerian teenager set in Washington, D.C.
Job Titles:
- Chairman Emeritus
- Chairman Emeritus More
Walter L. (Wally) Weisman is the chairman of the Board of Trustees of Sundance Institute. He began his career as a lawyer and is a graduate of Stanford University and the Stanford University Law School. He entered the health care field in 1969 and in 1972 joined American Medical International Inc., a hospital management company that owned and operated acute care hospitals across the United States and in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and Australia. Weisman became the company's chairman and later its chief executive officer in 1985.
Weisman is also a past chairman and now a life trustee of the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He is a senior trustee of the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology and a member of the Institute's oversight committee for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is a director of Occidental Petroleum Corporation (Los Angeles), and Fresenius Medical Care (Frankfurt, Germany). Mr. Weisman lives in Los Angeles with his wife Sheila. They have three children and five grandchildren.
Job Titles:
- President and Chief Executive Officer of Crown Media Family Networks
Wonya Lucas is president and chief executive officer of Crown Media Family Networks. Lucas oversees the company's portfolio of entertainment brands, including linear networks Hallmark Channel, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, and Hallmark Drama; and subscription video on demand service Hallmark Movies Now. Lucas is based in the company's Studio City office and reports to Mike Perry, president and chief executive officer of Hallmark Cards, Inc.
Yuval Noah Harari - Harari (currently my favorite writer of any kind) is a historian whose writing grapples with how technology is altering the way we live. His work leads me to see anew things that I thought I understood, while challenging me as a storyteller to think about the important stories that lie just around the corner.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Director
- Editor
- Advisor Studio
Éva Gárdos is an award-winning film director and editor born in Hungary. Francis Ford Coppola gave Gardos her first job in film, working as a production assistant on APOCALYPSE NOW in the Philippines. She went on to establish a career as a film editor (VALLEY GIRL, MASK, BARFLY, BASTARD OF OUT CAROLINA), working with distinguished directors such as Barbet Schroeder, Peter Bogdanovich, and Anjelica Huston.
Éva's screenwriting and feature film directorial debut, AN AMERICAN RHAPSODY, starred a young Scarlett Johansson. The film won many prizes on the Festival Circuit and was released by Paramount Classics. The producer Andrew Vajna (RAMBO, TERMINATOR, PLATOON) was an Executive Producer on AMERICAN RHAPSODY. When he was appointed Minister of the Hungarian Film Fund she worked with him as his Creative Consultant rewriting scripts, working with directors and editors on their films.
After discovering the bestselling Hungarian novel, Budapest Noir, she developed and directed the film version, Set in 1936, when Hungary was on the verge of embracing facism, the film resonates the politics of today. It premiered at the Chicago Film Festival, and has played at many other festivals such as Palm Springs, Denver, Shanghai. It will be on VOD April of 2020.
Amongst her current projects, is CINDY IN IRAQ, inspired by the true life events of Cindy Morgan, a truck driver from Arkansas who, having fallen on hard times, left her home and children to work as a contractor for Halliburton during the height of the Iraqi war.
Éva has taught Thesis Film Editing and Directing at NYFA for 6 years and is currently an Artist-in-Residence at the Sundance Institute.