Making Media Now 2011

 

Carol Atwood is the founder and CEO of Spartacus Media Enterprises, a social mission media company which consults stakeholders in their social, environmental and governance practices including producing conferences, convenings and advisory support for mission-driven media makers and their supporters. Spartacus Media co-produced Embrace Disruption, a micro-conference of SoCap in 2009 and 2010 and co –produced and hosted the “Investing in Media that Matters Gathering at Sundance. Carol is the Chair of the board of Filmmakers Collaborative, as well as on the board of The Calvert Foundation, King Arthur Flour, and IW Financial.
Mikaela Beardsley is an independent documentary producer with nearly two decades of documentary and television experience working. Currently, Mikaela is executive producing Half the Sky, an ambitious transmedia project by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. This project includes a multi-part PBS television series, community engagement campaign, website, social networking game, educational materials, and numerous strategic partnerships. She has raised funding for the project from sources including CPB, ITVS, The Ford Foundation, The Gates Foundation, The Hewlett Foundation, The Nike Foundation, The NoVo Foundation, The United Nations Foundation and USAID. In 2007, Mikaela produced Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (TCM) for Executive Producer Martin Scorsese. From 1999-2004, she worked with Martin Scorsese and Alex Gibney as the Supervising Producer on the seven-part PBS series Martin Scorsese Presents: The Blues.
Melissa Bradley is the Chief Executive Officer at Tides Foundation. She has a strong track record of creative and innovative leadership and a background as a social entrepreneur. Prior to Tides, Melissa founded and served as managing director of New Capitalist, an organization that leverages human, financial and social capital to create economically profitable and sustainable individuals, businesses, and communities. In this role, she facilitated over $20 million in venture capital transactions for seed stage companies. She founded The Entrepreneurial Development Institute, an international, non-governmental organization, serving youth and their families; and she founded Positive Impact – a collaborative initiative to promote diverse voices and visions within independent media.
Helen De Michiel is a director, writer and producer whose work includes film, television, media installation and now transmedia documentary. She has been a central participant in the media arts and public media field since 1983, when armed with her newly acquired MFA she landed a film curatorial position at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. She has made several award-winning independent nonfiction and dramatic works, produced programming for public television, created community media projects with youth, and writes regularly about issues in the media field. Her work is included in several museums around the country. From 1996 – 2010 Helen was the National Director and Co-Director for NAMAC, The National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, and from 2002-2007 she served on the Board of Directors and awards jury for The George F. Peabody Awards for Electronic Media. Her current transmedia project is Lunch Love Community, a multiplatform documentary that explores the Berkeley School Lunch Initiative and how a community came together to change the way our children eat.
Patricia Finneran oversees Special Projects, creative partnerships, and productions for the Sundance Documentary Film Program. She travels extensively to film festivals, international pitch forums, and markets to expand the roster of documentary filmmakers working with the program, deepen collaborations with filmmakers and cultural institutions, and broaden the human rights themes currently explored by the DFP. Her work also focuses on STORIES OF CHANGE: Social Entrepreneurship in Focus Through Documentary, a series of documentaries and an innovative collaboration between Sundance and the Skoll Foundation as well as Sundance’s partnership with the Gates Foundation. From 2003-2008 Finneran was Director of SILVERDOCS: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival. She launched the International Documentary Conference and oversaw the Festival’s growth to become the largest documentary festival in the US. She previously served as Artistic Director of the IFP Market, the leading US market for independent film projects in development.
Sandra Forman is an attorney with a diverse practice in the areas of entertainment and copyright law. Her clients include film and television producers and directors, writers, animators, publishers, distributors, and multi-media producers. Ms. Forman is “of counsel” to the law firm of Rich May. Over the past several years, she has served as project director and legal counsel on the Eyes on the Prize (about civil rights) Re-Release Project. Ms. Forman was recently chosen by readers of Women’s Business as one of the region’s top ten lawyers and serves on the Board of Directors of Filmmakers Collaborative.
Dawn Fratangelo is an award-winning broadcast journalist who, for 18 years, was a correspondent for NBC News. Prior to that, Dawn was a respected anchor and reporter for the Boston’s ABC affiliate, WCVB-TV. From breaking news to stories of the human condition, Dawn has been there: coverage of 9-11 from both NYC and London, interviews with some of the first U.S. servicemen wounded in the Iraq war, part of NBC’s DuPont award-winning coverage of Hurricane Katrina, the psychological effects of the Columbine school shootings which earned her an Emmy as did her reporting on the 2006 crisis in Lebanon. An avid baseball fan, Fratangelo won an Edward R. Murrow award for Sports Reporting.
Peter Frumkin has been a producer, writer and director of documentaries and non-fiction film and video for 30 years. His films have been broadcast on PBS, The Discovery Channel, the History Channel and Courtroom Television. Frumkin also works with a select group of corporate and educational clients, including Stonyfield, the organic yogurt maker. His recent work includes: Tobacco Roads (Center for Investigative Journalism, Sarajevo) an investigation into tobacco smuggling in the Balkans; Caring For Your Parents (WGBH Boston) which follows five Rhode Island families for six months as they face the challenges of caring for ailing elderly parents; and a series of short videos for Stonyfield. Frumkin also made the award winning film Woody Guthrie: Ain’t Got No Home for the PBS American Masters series. Frumkin has taught at Emerson College in Boston and is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He is President of Peter Frumkin Productions, LLC in Boston, MA.
Nate Garvis is President of Naked Civics, LLC, an innovative public affairs consultancy focusing on Interaction and Influence design. Naked Civics connects clients to the most important ideas, people and institutions in their communities of interest. Operating at the crossroads of Fortune 30 business, governments, academic institutions, foundations and NGO’s for the past twenty years, Garvis has built the skills and relationships that help clients assert their brands. Prior to creating Naked Civics, LLC, Garvis served as V.P. Government Affairs and Senior Public Affairs Officer for Target Corporation, He is a frequent lecturer and public speaker on the subject of cross-sector approaches to reengineering communities for better prosperity.
Paul Gasek is an Emmy-Nominated, Emmy Award-Winning Executive Producer and the Senior Science Editor for The Discovery Channel. He’s overseen hundreds of hours of programming, including DISCOVERING ARDI, KING TUT UNWRAPPED, MYSTERIES OF THE DINOSAUR MUMMY, TREASURE QUEST, RAGING PLANET 2, and ULTIMATE AIR JAWS III among others. Prior to joining Discovery, Gasek worked for the Science Channel and was owner and director of Stony Brook Films, located in Brewster, MA. He’s been a member of the Writer’s Guild of America since 1991, and has served as a guest lecturer at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and Boston University’s College of Communications.
Beth Harrington is an independent producer, director and writer. Working largely in the public television realm, she has enjoyed working relationships with both Oregon Public Broadcasting and WGBH. Her films reflect a deep-seated love of music, history and popular culture. Her film Welcome to the Club about the pioneering women of rockabilly received a 2003 Grammy nomination. Her film The Blinking Madonna and Other Miracles was about Boston’s North End and was seen on public TV and in numerous film festivals. In a previous lifetime, she was a rock & roll singer, most noted for her years as a member of Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers. Harrington’s latest work-in-progress is The Winding Stream, a feature-length documentary about the Carter and Cash roots music dynasty.
Beth Hoppe is an executive producer at Discovery Studios. Previously, Hoppe served as president and CEO of Optomen Productions, developing and producing high quality and highly rated programs for Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, History Channel, and Food Network. Prior to that, she was director of science programs at Thirteen/WNET New York and received Emmy awards for Outstanding Science Programs: “DNA” and “The Secret Life of the Brain.” She also was executive producer of PBS’s groundbreaking “Frontier House” and “Colonial House” series.
Cheryl Kiser is The Executive Director of The Lewis Institute and The Babson Social Innovation Lab. Ms. Kiser is responsible for addressing a critical aspect of the growth strategy for Babson by promoting broad support for Babson’s work in integrating people, planet, and profit issues into its curriculum and co-curricula activities. Ms. Kiser is developing Babson as the “go to place “for social entrepreneurship resources, activities, relationships, networks, knowledge, content, publications, cases and global convenings. Before coming to Babson, Ms. Kiser was the Managing Director of the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship. Cheryl is one of the leading voices in the U.S. on the role of business in society. She spearheaded a national initiative to engage leading businesses to take a collaborative approach to working on education issues.
Nikki Korn is a Principal at Cause Consulting. A fifteen year marketing and cause program development veteran, Nikki has deep expertise advising Fortune 500 companies, foundations, national nonprofits, and government agencies on partnership-building, philanthropy, signature program development, marketing communications, branding, and employee volunteerism. Nikki advises Cause Consulting clients on the development and execution of U.S. and global corporate citizenship and signature cause programs. Nikki is passionate about creating substantive social programs that also impact a company’s bottom-line. Prior to leading her own firm, Nikki served for nine years on the Cause Branding team at Omnicom’s Cone, LLC. As a Vice President, she oversaw the creation and execution of Cause Branding, strategic philanthropy, and marketing programs.
Sheila Leddy is the Executive Director at The Fledgling Fund. She has worked with the Fund since its inception playing a key role in developing its overall strategy in collaboration with the Fund’s president and board. She plays a leadership role in its Creative Media Initiative, developing grant guidelines, reviewing and developing projects and assessing their potential to advance the Fund’s mission. In 2008, she co-authored the white paper, Assessing Creative Media’s Social Impact. Prior to The Fledging Fund, she was a senior associate with The Crimson Group, a firm that provided customized management education programs for physician leaders and senior managers of large healthcare organizations. She was also a research assistant at Harvard Business School where she developed curriculum materials that examined the corporate role in the social sector. Sheila received her MBA from Boston University Graduate School of Management and her BA from the University of Notre Dame.
Beth Murphy is the founder of Principle Pictures, an independent film company dedicated to using cinema as a catalyst for understanding our world and inspiring action. She directed BEYOND BELIEF (Tribeca Film Festival, Sundance Channel), and is now spearheading a national multi-media Impact Campaign with the film in collaboration with the Fledgling Fund, Columbia University Teachers College and the PBS Digital Learning. She is currently directing/producing THE LIST, an ITVS-funded program focused on Iraqis whose lives are in danger because they worked with U.S. diplomats and soldiers. Murphy’s documentaries have aired on the Sundance Channel, History Channel, PBS, Discovery, Lifetime and numerous international broadcasters. She has taught courses at Suffolk University and American University Paris.
Lesley Norman has been the Executive Director of Filmmakers Collaborative since September 2010. Prior to this, she was the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of JumpStart Productions in New York, and Executive In Charge of the award-winning series NOW on PBS. Before Jumpstart, Lesley was Vice President and Production Executive of David Grubin Productions. She has multiple program Emmy awards for her work with NOW on PBS, and was senior producer on the documentary “Child Brides, Stolen Lives,” which won the Edward R. Murrow award from the Overseas Press Club. She has worked on other award-winning productions such as “The Secret Life of the Brain,” “Napoleon,” and “Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided” for David Grubin Productions, and “Africans in America” and NOVA for WGBH.
David Tamés is a filmmaker and media technologist. He recently joined the Studio Foundations department at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design as Media Arts Studio Manager. He has worked in key creative roles on a range of award-winning projects including Never Met Picasso, The East Village, and Smile Boston Project. David served as Project Manager launching MIT TechTV, a video sharing site for the MIT Community. He earned a M.S. in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Laboratory. David serves on the Board of Directors of Filmmakers Collaborative and often speaks at film festivals and industry events. He blogs at Kino-Eye.com.
Judith Vecchione works as an executive producer in the National Programming unit of WGBH Boston. Her work includes such award-winning productions as Eyes on the Prize (series senior producer), Americas (executive producer), and The Longoria Affair (executive producer). In addition, for the past 10 years she has been executive director of the CPB/PBS Producers Workshop, which focuses on finding and developing the next generation of talented professionals for national public broadcasting on all its platforms. She is currently developing “Paralympics 2012,” a trans-media documentary project.

Irene Wachsler is a managing member of Tobolsky & Wachsler CPA’s and is responsible for the Audit Practice. In addition to taxes, the firm specializes in performing the audit / agreed-upon procedures for the Massachusetts film tax credits and has performed a number of agreed-upon procedures for productions including motion pictures, television series, documentaries and commercials. Irene also performs audit, review, and compilation services for the not-for-profit sector. Irene received her Masters degree in Business Administration from Babson College. Irene worked at Deloitte & Touche LLP. She also worked in the high-tech, banking and non-profit sectors.
Allison Winshel As Senior Director of Primetime Programming at PBS, Ms. Winshel is responsible for identifying programs for distribution through the National Program Service. She is part of the PBS programming team that sets priorities, evaluates proposals, makes funding recommendations and oversees program development from the point of funding through broadcast. She joined PBS in 1998. Her public broadcasting career began at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and her experience outside of the public broadcasting industry includes more than 10 years in the non-profit sector at a variety of service organizations including the National AIDS Clearinghouse. Ms. Winshel attended Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management where she earned an MBA and certificate in non-profit management.