Storytelling for Impact – SWF 2012
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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Science Correspondent, National Public Radio
Christopher Joyce’s stories can be heard on all of NPR's news programs, including NPR's Morning Edition and Weekend Edition. He came to NPR in 1993 as part-time editor while finishing a book about tropical rainforests, and worked on NPR's national desk. Christopher has written two non-fiction books on scientific topics: Witnesses from the Grave: The Stories Bones Tell (with Co-Author Eric Stover) and Earthly Goods: Medicine-Hunting in the Rainforest. He won the 2001 American Association for the Advancement of Science excellence in journalism award.
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Senior Vice President and Publisher, HarperCollins Publishers
SVP/Publisher
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Executive Director, The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture
Wendy’s creative work takes place at the intersection of storytelling, innovation and social justice. As the Executive Director of The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture, she is focused on facilitating collaboration, innovation, strategic growth and social impact for the media arts field, and is the founder and director of Arts2Work, the first National Apprenticeship Program in Media Arts and Creative Technologies, and the Executive Producer of The VR Colored Girls Museum. Previously, Wendy was a Senior Consultant at Sundance, helping develop the Sundance/Skoll Stories of Change Program and the New Frontier Story Lab. Wendy also directed the MacArthur Foundation-funded Producers Institute for New Media Technologies, the first public media Innovation Lab in the US. She began her career in film as the Festival Director for the Film Arts Festival for Independent Cinema at Film Arts Foundation in San Francisco, and has been a featured speaker and moderator at Sundance, Tribeca, the United Nations, Skoll World Forum, and many other venues. Wendy is the current president of the Board of Directors of Skylight, an international human rights media organization based in Brooklyn, NY. Wendy’s first film premiered at Sundance in 1997 and she is the recipient of the Princess Grace Statue Award for distinguished contribution to the media arts field.
