Shifting the Paradigm: Social Entrepreneurs and the Art of Fiction Film
Speakers
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Director, JustFilms, Ford Foundation
Cara Mertes’ career focuses on supporting and connecting independent film communities globally as a public television executive, independent executive producer/director, funder, curator and teacher. Currently Director of Ford Foundation’s JustFilms, she funds content, networks and leadership fostering independent film/digital storytelling. She has served as Director, Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and Fund and Executive Producer of the POV documentary series on PBS, where she was awarded with multiple Emmy, George Foster Peabody, and duPont-Columbia awards. She has executive produced several Oscar-nominated films, including Street Fight, My Country My Country and The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) and led major Ford Foundation funding and support for Academy Award winner CITIZENFOUR. She served as executive director of American Documentary Inc., and has taught and written about the independent documentary movement. Mertes is a member of NATAS, WGA and AMPAS.
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John Marks was until 2014 the President of Search for Common Ground (SFCG), a peacebuilding NGO he founded in 1982 that now has 700 staff with offices in 36 countries. SFCG was nominated for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. John also founded Common Ground Productions (CGP) and produced and/or executive-produced TV series in more than 20 countries. He remains a Senior Advisor to both SFCG and CGP. In addition, he is Visiting Scholar in Peacebuilding and Social Entrepreneurship at Leiden University in the Netherlands. With his wife, Susan Collin Marks, he is a Skoll Awardee in Social Entrepreneurship, and, additionally, he is an Ashoka Senior Fellow. A best-selling, award-winning author, he graduated from Cornell University, and he was a Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School. He has an honorary PhD from the UN’s University of Peace in Costa Rica. (Please see www.johnmarks.online)
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President and Producer, Truth Aid
Dr. Mehret Mandefro is a primary care physician, filmmaker and scholar who draws from her background as an anthropologist and public health research to craft textured narratives that explore the social determinants of health. She is the Founder and President of Truth Aid, a media company that specializes in communication about the social determinants of health. Truth Aid co-produced the feature length film DIFRET which recently won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival.
Dr. Mandefro received her BA in Anthropology and her MD from Harvard University, and a Masters of Science in the Public Health of Developing Countries at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as a Fulbright Scholar. She completed her internal medicine primary care residency at Montefiore Medical Center and is currently an Adjunct Professor of Health Policy at the George Washington School of Public Health and Health Services.
