Meet the Film Team
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Kerri L. Kennedy, producer Kerri worked in New Orleans as a Gulf Coast hurricane relief and recovery program manager for MercyCorps, a disaster relief organization, where she managed youth and grant-making programs. While there, she organized Comfort for Kids, a program that trained caregivers to support youth traumatized by Katrina, Rita and displacement. While the program was successful, she also wanted to provide an environment where children could talk openly about how the disaster affected them, as many were not doing so. By providing tools for the children to tell their own stories, she felt that it could help them cope with the aftermath of the storms and become engaged in the rebuilding of their communities. And so, the film project was born. Kerri has ten years of experience managing multi-sector international and community development programs with a focus on governance, education, advocacy/policy and public health programs. Currently, she holds the Director of Development position for Vizion Group Inc., a fundraising, marketing and management firm. Prior to working for Mercy Corps in 2006, she was a program specialist with Women’s Campaign International (WCI), an organization dedicated to supporting women involved in elections for local or national government in developing nations, at the University of Pennsylvania. In this position, she managed a $2.3 million program, led trainings for 500 members of Parliament (MPs) in Ethiopia along with aspiring candidates, and worked with MPs to run policy reform and media advocacy campaigns. She has worked as an external relations consultant for Family Health International (FHI), writing proposals for programs in SE Asia and Africa. She has facilitated strategic planning trainings, consulted the National Council of International Visitors (NCIV), developed human rights curricula for high schools in East Timor, worked for National Foundation of Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) to promote micro-enterprise skills among youth, and was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Kingdom of Tonga, where she built a vocational school. Kerri was a National Security Boren Fellow studying East Timor’s post conflict development, where she created and produced a documentary on women ex-combatants. She has worked in 14 countries and speaks Tongan and Tetum. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and a Master of Science degree in International Development Management with an emphasis in post-conflict reconstruction. |
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Sam Lee, editor Sam has been working in film for ten years. Originally from Wales, she moved to New York City in 1992 to become Head Teacher of a second and third grade class in Harlem. Since, she has edited and produced projects for NBC News, The Learning Channel, Broadcast News Network, Bravo, MTV, VH1 and Amnesty International. Sam has just finished her first feature-length documentary called The Perfect Life where after 10 years Sam goes back to find the students she taught in second grade and follows them for two years. The film had its world premiere at Slamdance Film Festival. Her other feature-length credits include: Trading Women, a film that focuses on sex trafficking of minority women in Southeast Asia; Pleasure and Pain, a 90-minute film on musician Ben Harper; and 270 Miles from Graceland, a 2-hour film on the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee. For more information, please visit: The Perfect Life website |
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Jason Ross, executive producer Jason is the co-founder of Show Cobra Productions and founder of Map Division. |
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Susie Shapira, associate producer Susie is a freelance photojournalist based in San Francisco. She works with agencies, non-profit organizations, museums, media outlets, private commissions and gallery shows. Her work has taken her all over the world focusing primarily on international and domestic emergencies. Recent projects include working with organizations such as Care International, Doctors Withour Borders, Save the Children and of course Mercycorps. Subjects range from post-tsunami rebuilding in Sri Lanka to famine and HIV in Ethiopia, Niger and Uganda. She spent four months shooting and volunteering for Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans in the months following Katrina and came back over the summer to work on the documentary. For more information, please visit: Susie’s website |
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Joseph Van Harken, director Starting first in print and photography, Joseph began his journalism career at a weekly newspaper in northern Michigan called The Mackinac Island Town Crier. Drawn to the moving picture, he changed gears and moved to El Paso, TX to work for the ABC affiliate KVIA-TV. He then made the leap to new media and transplanted to New York City to help start an online company focused on providing tools to help local television stations create a web presence. Shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, Joseph realized that he had strayed too far from his storytelling calling and went back to school. Since, Joseph has focused on one-man-band and long-form projects. He has been fortunate enough to have his work appear on CNN, MTV, ESPN, Discovery Health, NationialGeographic.com, The Travel Channel, The Sci-Fi Channel, Showtime, The Sundance Channel and the Tribeca Film Festival. He has documented the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, traveled undercover through Afghanistan, rode the recall bus with Arnold Swarzenegger, unmasked a drag queen in Queens, captured a pregnant woman’s fight against a rare, aggressive form of breast cancer, shot models in Miami, road tripped with rappers, raced cars cross-country with cannonballers, unzipped the underworld of New York City’s up-and-coming fashion designers and most recently taught students affected by Hurricane Katrina how to shoot video and create their own public service announcements. Joseph holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies from the University of Michigan and a Master of Science degree in Journalism form Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. For more information, please visit: Joseph’s (slightly-out-of-date) website |
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Paul E. Wright, producer Paul has spent 10 years working in various areas of media, technology and finance as both a personal and professional passion. His work with Kerri and Joseph on Children of New Orleans: Still Weathering The Storm and their previous short documentary Learning to Live with Freedom, which explores the role of women before, during and after the fight for independence in East Timor, represents his belief that technology and media– traditional and digital– can be used to address and bring light to difficult and important issues that arise after the headlines have passed. During working hours, Paul is a co-founder and currently Vice President of Business Development for Mediaguide, a media services and information technology company, founded with the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP). The company uses proprietary digital fingerprinting and phonetic search technology to electronically monitor music, advertisements and talk topics across over 2,600 college, non-commercial and commercial radio stations. Mediaguide also supports music and music-related search and discovery, digital distribution and commerce and the legal marketing and exchange of intellectual property online. Paul is responsible for identifying and implementing new business initiatives and strategic partnerships across all areas for Mediaguide, especially focusing on connecting online and offline data and services for broadcasters, content owners and advertisers. Prior to serving on the founding team for Mediaguide, Paul co-founded Frequency Media with a high school friend, the first company to electronically monitor college and non-commercial radio. Frequency Media was acquired by Mediaguide in 2002. While at Frequency Media, he was responsible for overall business strategy, fundraising, technology licensing and development and daily operations. Paul is a long-time “music junkie” with experience in both the business and creative sides of media. Prior to founding Frequency Media, Paul was Manager of Corporate Development for Imax Corporation, the world leader in large format entertainment. While at Imax, Paul helped lead the company’s strategic investments, corporate development and fundraising activities. Prior to Imax, Paul worked in the Media & Entertainment Corporate Finance Group at Bear Stearns & Co., Inc., a major-bracket New York investment bank where he worked extensively with media companies of all sizes on M and A, public and private equity and debt transactions totaling over $2 billion. Paul is a frequent speaker at music and technology conferences on topics ranging from music marketing to technology solutions copyright compliance. Most recently, he was invited to speak at the 2006 International Copyright Institute (“ICI”) in Washington DC, to be held at the end of November. The main objective of the symposium is to equip senior government officials with information on the effects of new technologies on the creation, dissemination, exploitation and administration of literary, musical, artistic and audiovisual works. Paul will be leading a seminar called “Demonstration of Fingerprinting Music Performance Technology.” Paul graduated Cum Laude from Washington and Lee University with dual Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics (with honors) and Journalism. |