About Us

Working Films leverages the power of documentary films to advance social justice and environmental protection.

Recognizing the power of film to inform and inspire, Working Films positions documentaries to increase civic engagement and shift culture at the local, state, and national level. We offer funding and in-kind support to underrepresented filmmakers. We also share our learning and foster dialogue that furthers constructive change within the field of documentary. We lead conversations and trainings for grassroots groups and nonprofits to ensure that nonfiction media is increasingly embraced as a critical resource in their strategies for social change.

Our work is made possible with generous support from The Campbell Foundation, Ford Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Kendeda Fund, North Carolina Local News Lab Fund, Perspective Fund, Putnam Foundation, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, and individual donors.

STAFF

Amalia Renteria

Communications Lead

Amalia Renteria (pronoun she/her) joined Working Films in 2022 and currently serves as the Communications Lead. Raised along the U.S. and Mexico border in California and as the daughter of immigrants, Amalia’s work is dedicated to uplifting and honoring the legacies we come from through creative storytelling. Previously, Amalia was the Digital Marketing Associate Manager for ITVS and Senior Marketing Associate for Youth Speaks, where she was able to support and work on local and national marketing campaigns for documentary films and spoken word poetry festivals.

During her downtime, Amalia, who now calls San Jose/Bay Area home, enjoys collecting records, painting, learning how to mix music, hiking, and working on graphic design projects.

Andy Myers

Director of Campaigns and Strategy

Andy Myers (pronoun: he) joined Working Films in 2011 and now serves as Senior Campaign Coordinator. A longtime proponent of connecting film with activism, he has led the development and implementation of Working Films' state based organizing with film, including the Coal Ash Stories, Fracking Stories, You Are Here, and Shore Stories campaigns. Andy facilitates dozens of partnerships between local, state, regional, and national partners using documentary to advance their goals for social and environmental justice. He also appreciates music's revolutionary role throughout history and currently plays saxophone in the Asheville-based radical marching band Brass Your Heart.

Anna Lee

Director of Learning and Development

Anna Lee (pronoun: she) serves as the Director of Learning and Development at Working Films. Since joining Working Films in 2005, she has developed and coordinated numerous impact campaigns, consulted and partnered with hundreds of filmmakers and nonprofits leaders to increase their capacity to use film to move the dial on the critical issues of our time.

Anna brings previous experience as an educator to Working Films, using her background in curriculum design to enhance our trainings for filmmakers and nonprofits. Prior to joining Working Films, Anna was the Program Director at Amigos Internacional, a Latino advocacy and education center in Wilmington and prior to that was an educator of children and adults, teaching in bilingual education programs in the US and Latin America. Anna earned a Master of Education from Arizona State University and a B.A. in Sociology from Wake Forest University.

In her current role at Working Films, Anna leads evaluation, stewarding core values of learning and innovation. Anna is also part of the Development Team that raises funds for our efforts. Anna is Working FIlms representative on the design team of the Rise Home Stories Project, a groundbreaking collaboration between multimedia storytellers and social justice advocates seeking to change our relationship to land, home, and race, by transforming the stories we tell about them.

When she’s not working you can find her at the beach with her family - surfboard, kayak or book in hand.

Hannah Hearn

Impact Coordinator and Fellowships Lead

Hannah Hearn (pronoun: she) is a Chinese-American adoptee who grew up in North Myrtle Beach, SC and who has continued to reside on the Southeast coast in Wilmington, NC. She joined Working Films in 2018 and is now an Impact Coordinator and Fellowships Lead. In her time at Working Films, Hannah has organized film screenings to move people to action on social and environmental justice, designed and led sessions on documentary impact and ethical filmmaking, and co-coordinated programs that highlight, support, and connect underrepresented filmmakers. She holds a B.A in Film Studies from UNC Wilmington and through that, had the opportunity to learn about and work on social issue documentaries and co-lead the coordination of a student-centered, student-run film festival; She was the Managing Director of Visions Film Festival & Conference and the Sound Mixer for the feature-length documentary “Dead in the Water” - a film that exposes the harmful practices of factory farms in eastern NC. Throughout her different roles, Hannah continually seeks to learn about different issues that affect our communities and think about the creative ways in which independent films can be used for change.

Gerry Leonard

Director of Filmmaker Services and Impact

Gerry (pronoun: he) brings into the field of narrative shift and documentary impact, a background in grassroots organizing and policy advocacy that seeks to challenge power on all fronts to create space for healing and collective liberation. He joined the Working Films team in 2019, and has previously worked on issues focused on food justice, voting rights, and police accountability. Gerry also has a background leading DEI and racial equity work. His leadership on various coalitions and boards have resulted in policies to address racial inequities within the carceral system, new state-wide advocacy initiatives, and collaborative funding opportunities for equitable and just community leadership.
In Gerry’s current role as the Director of Filmmaker Services and Impact, he leads the design, implementation, and evaluation of services and funding Working Films provides to filmmakers. He currently serves on the Leadership Team of the Asian American Documentary Network (A-DOC), and is on the steering committee for the Global Impact Producers Assembly and Happy Family Night Market.
In his spare time, you can find Gerry spending time with his dog and cat, Diogo and Esteban, biking around the city, and basking in his year-round Leo vibes.

Mara Henderson

Impact Coordinator

Mara Henderson (pronoun: she) joined Working Films in 2023 as an Impact Coordinator. She holds a B.A in African American Studies and a B.A in Environmental Policy and Decision Making from the University of Puget Sound. Previously, Mara has worked in documentary production and post production, at an arts institution and international network focused on climate justice and on political campaigns at the state level. Mara’s work is dedicated to fostering curiosity and instilling hope for a more just and liberated future through organizing and creative storytelling.

Mara, born in Minnesota, is currently based in Portland, OR where she spends her time exploring green spaces, researching local history, plotting with her neighborhood climate group, and getting sticky with paper collage.

Molly Murphy

Director of Partnerships and Innovation

Molly Murphy (pronoun: she) co-directs Working Films. In her twenty year tenure, she has planned and directed national media engagement campaigns, facilitated partnerships and coordinated coalitions centered on the use of documentaries to enhance communication, reach beyond the choir, and make an impact. Molly has designed and led dozens of trainings for filmmakers, grassroots organizers, and NGOs focused on using film to effect change. At Working Films, she is responsible for overall organizational management, programmatic strategy, institutional partnerships, and fundraising.

Molly also serves on the board of Justice for My Sister (JFMS), a collective that trains women of color, non-binary youth, and foster youth with a culturally-relevant and trauma-informed approach to tell stories through a gender equity and racial justice lens.

Natalie Bullock Brown

Director of DAWG

Natalie Bullock Brown is the director of the Documentary Accountability Working
Group, a collective she helped to found in 2020 which released a values-informed
framework for documentary filmmakers that emphasizes care, consent, and
collaboration as a pathway to ethical storytelling. She is also a documentary film
producer and emerging director; a 2023 Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein
Center Documentary Film Fellow; a 2023 DOC NYC New Leader; and a 2021
Rockwood Institute JustFilms Fellow. Natalie is director/producer of a work-in-
progress that explores Black women, beauty and aging, and is executive producer
for filmmaker Resita Cox's upcoming film, Basketball Heaven. Natalie was a producer
on award-winning filmmaker Byron Hurt’s PBS documentary, HAZING, and
produced his PBS NOVA film, Lee and Liza’s Family Tree. Natalie is an adjunct
professor at North Carolina State University where she served as an Assistant
Teaching Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies for five years. Natalie was the
StoryShift Strategist for Working Films, where she guided the organization’s work in
promoting accountable documentary storytelling. For five years, Natalie was also a
monthly guest and contributor for #BackChannel, a segment on North Carolina
public radio’s program, The State of Things. She also served 12 years as co-host of
Black Issues Forum, a public affairs program on UNC-TV, North Carolina’s statewide
public television network. And for nearly 12 years, Natalie was an assistant
professor of film and broadcast media in the Department of Media &
Communications at Saint Augustine's University. Natalie was an associate producer
on filmmaker Ken Burns’ 10-part PBS series, Jazz. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in
Film Production from Howard University, and a Bachelor of Arts in English from
Northwestern University.

Puja Mitchell

Organizational and Administrative Coordinator

Puja Mitchell (pronoun: she) joined Working Films at the start of 2023. Before that, she served as the Cultural Director for the Cape Fear Association of India for over a decade which afforded her the opportunity to fundraise for, and become involved with a large variety of organizations. The ones which she gravitated towards most often were the organizations which worked to improve orphanages for abandoned and trafficked children, and those that offered programs to help women achieve economic independence.

As time went on she felt that it was important to give the next generation a platform through which they could make effective contributions, and cofounded a youth group within the same Association. She helped guide the youth group through planning and executing numerous events over a decade which served to benefit several local food centric charities in NC.

In addition to her volunteer efforts she has held a variety of administrative and director positions which helped her hone organizational and logistical skills that she is now excited to share with Working Films!

In her downtime you can find her spending time with her three (almost adult children!) before they fly the nest, as well as planning fun events that bring her friends, and family together!

Stephanie Avery Taylor

Director of Finance and Organizational Resilience

Stephanie Avery Taylor (pronoun: she) is Working Films’ Operations and Finance Administrator.

Stephanie has an extensive background in racial justice and environmental education. She was a 2009 honoree of the National Women's History Project for the Leave No Trace Master Educator training and Eco-Camps she started, which inspire children to become good stewards of the land. Stephanie has served as a board member of the Cucalorus Film Festival and co-hosted the community Racial Rewind film series which focused on racial tensions throughout history and sparked involvement from participants to be active members of society for improved race relations. As the former Racial Justice director at the YWCA she worked with other local organizers to bring an inventive education series, The History of Wilmington in Black and White. Her previous experience as a business office manager gives her a unique and valuable skill set for managing Working Films’ administrative needs.

BOARD

Felix Endara

Chair

Ecuadorian filmmaker Felix Endara claims a long and consistent track record of producing innovative, thought-provoking media that has screened at prestigious film festivals such as Berlinale, DOC NYC, and Mill Valley. Topics he has covered have ranged from the preservation of LGBT historical spaces to portrayals of activists who challenge prejudice and violence. His work as an independent programmer and arts administrator draw on his values to champion art that functions as a catalyst for social change.

Kim Pevia

Vice Chair

Kim Pevia is an experienced life strategist, an engaging keynote speaker, and a skilled workshop facilitator. Her workshops are experiential and transformational. She specializes in identifying the issues that keep us stuck and addresses them by developing a personalized toolbox to help us hurdle over them. Her favorite work is done in circles. Her favorite topics include Emotional intelligence, Gifts of Conflict, Impacts of Historical Trauma, Cultural Healing, Innocuous Nature of Fear, most of which she includes in Race, Equity and Inclusion work. Born and educated in Baltimore, MD she currently lives in Robeson County, NC where her roots run deep as a member of the Lumbee Tribe.

She serves on many local, state and national boards that support community activism and local economy through arts, food, culture and tourism. She recently served as Chair of the Board of Alternate Roots. In 2015 she founded Artist Market-Pembroke, providing retail opportunities for local and regional artists in southeast North Carolina. Her love of community and films is expressed as the curator of the annual Lumbee Film Festival (along with Cucalorus) and the quarterly CommUnity Cinema (in partnership with Working Films). She expresses her creativity as a writer and workshop/training facilitator.

Adamu Chan

Board Member

Adamu Chan is a filmmaker, writer, and community organizer from the Bay Area who was incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison during one of the largest COVID-19 outbreaks in the country. He produced numerous short films while incarcerated, using his vantage point and experience as an incarcerated person as a lens to focus the viewer’s gaze on issues related to social justice. In 2021, he was a recipient of the "Docs in Action Film Fund" through Working Films, and was tapped to produce and direct his film What These Walls Won't Hold, which won Best Documentary Mid-Length at the 2023 San Francisco international Film Festival. In 2022, Adamu directed a documentary short for the doc-series Bridge Builders, partnering with ITVS/Independent Lens, about a community member working at the intersections of immigration, incarceration, and gender justice. He is also a 2022 Stanford University Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity Mellon Arts Fellow, and a 2023 Rockwood Institute Documentary Leaders Fellow. Adamu draws inspiration and energy from the voices of those directly impacted, and seeks to empower them to reshape the narratives that have been created about them through film.

Anayansi Prado

Board Member

Anayansi Prado is an award-winning documentary director and producer with over 20 years of experience. Her work has focused on issues of immigration, race identity, and other social and humanitarian issues. Anayansi's films have aired nationally on PBS and abroad, including her feature films Maid in America (Independent Lens), Children in No Man’s Land (PBS), Paraíso for Sale (PBS), and The Unafraid (America Reframed). She was one of the directors of And She Could Be Next (POV), executive produced by Ava DuVernay, Grace Lee, and Marjan Safinia. Ms. Prado is a 2023 Concordia Studio Fellow, a 2022 Chicken & Egg Award recipient, a Rockefeller Media Fellow, a Creative Capital Grantee. Her work has been funded by The Sundance Institute, The MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation: Just Films, ITVS, Perspective Fund, Tribeca Studios, and others. Since 2009, Anayansi has served as a Film Expert for the State Department’s Cultural Diplomacy Program The American Film Showcase and has taught documentary workshops in 5 continents.

Angel Dozier

Board Member

Angel Iset Dozier is an activist, creative, educator and founder of Be Connected Durham, a community initiative connecting audiences, addressing disparities, fostering equity, and bridging access gaps through the arts, culture, music, and politics. She is a hip hop film and music lover and has used yoga, dance, literature, and golden era hip hop, specifically, to drive her work as a world languages instructor and curriculum specialist within public, private and Montessori school systems.

Through Be Connected Durham, Angel has emerged as an urban visionary, championing community initiatives that connect organizations like Duke Performances, Carolina Performing Arts, Airolina Young Aviators, SheaMoisture, and more, to their authentically diverse target audiences. Each of Be Connected Durham’s projects serve as campaigns to affect positive change for marginalized, yet highly capable and valuable contributors to our society.

Betty Yu

Board Member

Betty Yu is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, educator, and activist born and raised in NYC to Chinese immigrant parents. Ms. Yu integrates documentary film, new media platforms, and community-infused approaches into her practice, and she is a co-founder Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective using art to advance anti-gentrification organizing. Ms. Yu has been awarded artist residencies and Fellowships with institutions such as the Laundromat Project, International Studio & Curatorial Program, the Intercultural Leadership Institute, and SPACE at Ryder Farm. Her work has been presented at the Directors Guild of America, Brooklyn Museum, Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival, Tribeca Film Festival's Interactive Showcase, The Eastman Kodak Museum, and the 2019 BRIC Biennial; and in 2018 she had a solo exhibition at Open Source Gallery in New York. In 2017 Ms. Yu won the Aronson Journalism for Social Justice Award for her film Three Tours about U.S. veterans returning home from war in Iraq, and their journey to overcome PTSD. She holds a BFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and a MFA from Hunter College, and currently teaches video, social practice, art and activism at Pratt Institute, John Jay College, and The New School, in addition to 20 her years of community, media justice, and labor organizing work.

Caty Borum Chattoo

Board Member

Caty Borum Chattoo is Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact (CMSI), an innovation lab and research center at American University that creates, showcases and studies media designed for social change; and Executive in Residence at the American University School of Communication in Washington, D.C. She is an award-winning communication strategist and documentary film/TV producer working at the intersection of social-change communication, research, documentary and entertainment storytelling.

Borum Chattoo’s social-change storytelling, strategy and research work has been featured in USA Today, NPR, Businessweek, The Huffington Post, and PBS MediaShift, and her social justice documentaries have aired internationally and nationally on Netflix, the Sundance Channel, Pivot, NDTV (India), PBS World, Link TV, KCET, DirectTV and theatrically. She has produced two documentary feature films (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price and The After Party), a TV documentary and transmedia series (Stand Up Planet, starring Hasan Minhaj from “The Daily Show”), a multi-part documentary TV series focused on global poverty (ViewChange), a seven-part environmental justice documentary TV series (Sierra Club Chronicles), and PSA campaigns designed for social change on issues ranging from global poverty to climate change to HIV. At CMSI, her current research, creative and strategy work focuses on audience effects of documentary storytelling, nonfiction industry race and gender diversity, audience effects of entertainment storytelling across platforms, and the role of comedy in social justice.

Previously, she was senior vice president in the social marketing practice group at FleishmanHillard International Communications in Washington, D.C., focused on social-change programs. In Los Angeles, she was a longtime collaborator with legendary TV producer and philanthropist/activist Norman Lear as a founding director of Declare Yourself, a national youth civic engagement organization; and special projects director & senior producer at the USC Norman Lear Center, a research and public policy center that examines the social impact of entertainment on society. She also served as the program officer in the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Entertainment Media & Public Health program; project director at the Center for Media Education; and fellow in civic journalism at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Borum Chattoo holds an M.A. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania (The Annenberg School for Communication), and a B.A. in Communication Studies (summa cum laude, In Honors, Phi Beta Kappa) from Virginia Tech.

Courtney Symone Staton

Board Member

Courtney Symone Staton, from Greenville, North Carolina, is a Black organizer, poet, and filmmaker dedicated to creating space for collective liberation through the sharing of stories. Her debut documentary, a participatory short Silence Sam, about the systemic silencing of activism during a movement to remove a Confederate monument from campus, premiered at BlackStar Film Festival in 2019, and since then has had impact-driven screenings across the South. Courtney believes deeply in reclaiming Black history, and uplifting stories of Black changemakers whose legacy we live in in the present, creating and leading Youth FX’s History Reclamation Project, a program reconnecting local high school students to Albany’s legacy of activism through participatory documentary filmmaking. A NeXt Doc fellow and impact producer of The Neutral Ground, Courtney works to drive viewers past the point of empathy to the point of healing and action.

Ellen Bollinger

Board Member

Ellen Bollinger consults for reality-respecting news organizations to drive advertising revenue, writes marketing materials and, with her husband, sells advertising and produces events for a cannabis news organization, based in California.

Undergraduate work at New College in Sarasota, FL resulted in a degree in Psychological Anthropology with a Theater Minor. An entry level job with a theatrical PR firm in the Sardi’s building on West 44th Street gave her a good understanding of ‘earned’ media and a permanent love for the theater and media crowd who convened at the second-floor bar. Those contacts soon resulted in her sales position with The NYT where, over the span of a decade, she went on to win two Publishers Award for new business development and MVP trophies for their Co-Ed softball championship team.

During sixteen years as VP Advertising with The Nation magazine, Ellen worked with documentary filmmakers and distributors to build awareness and attendance for their films, often attending Sundance, Woodstock Film Festival and Docs NYC.

Additionally, Ellen serves on the Board of a Friends Group of the Sandy Hook Unit of Gateway National Recreation Area to support the National Park Service in conservation of endangered species, environmental protections and cultural awareness of historic sites in northeastern Monmouth County, NJ as well as Communications Director of a local chapter of Indivisible.

Her husband is a writer and creator of healthy cocktails and their son works for AmeriCorps in New Orleans on coastal restoration and sustainable flora and fauna.

Juanita Anderson

Board Member

Juanita Anderson is a producer, director, still photographer and media educator who was born and raised in Detroit. Her creative work lies at the intersection of cultural history, artistic expression and the responses to social injustice that amplify the voices of communities too seldom represented on screen.

Lia Ballentine

Board Member

Lia Ballentine is an entrepreneur and strategist dedicated to amplifying the impact of mission-driven organizations. She is the founder of Yumday, a specialty snack box subscription service featuring women- and BIPOC-led brands, and is also a senior consultant with Boldsquare, a strategy and management firm. Lia’s previous career spans over a decade in leadership roles at iconic media companies, including 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures Entertainment. Outside of work, and in addition to serving on the Working Films board, she also serves on the board of Farmshare Austin, a nonprofit on a mission to create a healthy, just and equitable local food system by increasing community food access and cultivating new farmers. After living in Los Angeles and Austin for years, Lia now resides in Wilmington, NC, with her husband and rescue dog.

Malaika Mose

Board Member

Malaika (Paquiot) Mose splits her times between her 2 loves: film and tech. To this end, she is a Digital Strategist with ARRAY, formerly known as African American Film Festival Releasing Movement (AFFRM), founded by the director of the Oscar-nominated film SELMA: Ava DuVernay. Malaika's led a group of 60 volunteers in the digital promotion of 13 out of ARRAY's 14 releases and will be working on their 15th acquisition: NAMOUR.

Vice-President of Product Management at a Wilmington, NC-based cloud banking startup, she has been in the software industry for 14 years during which time she has won the National Women of Color Technology Award.

She merges the tech and film worlds by writing on online film distribution and crowdfunding and has done so for Focal Press' Mastering Film blog, Filmmaker Magazine's blog and her own blog Beyond the Box Office. Up since 2009, it focuses on innovative ways for filmmakers to distribute their films, including set-top boxes, streaming services and mobile apps.

An authority on online film distribution, Malaika has been invited to cover industry events like National Association of Broadcasters, and has covered events like NewTeeVee Live, The Conversation, IFP and Power to the Pixel’s CrossMedia Forum NYC, DIY Days and SXSW. When last she checked, she was listed 84 times on Twitter in such categories as filmmaking, film-video, IPTV, new movie distribution and her personal favorite: Awesomocity.

She is currently a member of the Sundance Institute and a former board member of the San Jose Multicultural Artists Guild.

Having got to know Working Films co-founder Robert West briefly in the year before his diagnosis, it is her great honor to lend her skills to advancing the mission of the organization through membership on its board.

Paige Wood

Board Member

Paige Wood is an award-winning filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, and creative consultant. Born in Detroit, Paige has produced and/or co-written a number of critically-acclaimed documentary and narrative films since the start of her freelance career in 2018. Currently, Paige serves as the Supervising Producer for the Rise-Home Stories Project, which features over five narrative-shifting multimedia projects supported by The Ford Foundation, in addition to serving as an adjunct instructor at Wayne State University. Paige is a 2020 Kresge Artist Fellow, an alumni of Firelight Media's 2018-2019 Impact Producer Cohort, as well as a 2019 Sundance Institute | Knight Foundation Program fellow.

Tracy Rector

Board Member

Tracy Rector (Choctaw/Seminole) is a mixed-race filmmaker, curator, community organizer, and programmer. She has directed and produced over 400 shorts and other films including the award-winning Teachings of the Tree People, March Point, Maiden of Deception Pass, and Ch'aak' S'aagi. She is in production on her sixth feature documentary Outta the Muck with support from ITVS. As an impact producer, Tracy served on the team for the Emmy Award winning feature documentary Dawnland, which premiered on Independent Lens’ 2018/19 season to 2.1 million viewers in its opening week. Her work has also been featured in National Geographic, imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian. Tracy is the co-founder of Longhouse Media, a non-profit focused on galvanizing Indigenous and local communities through film production. Since 2005, she has worked with over 50 tribal nations and helped train 3,000 young people. Tracy has received the National Association for Media Literacy Education Award, 2016 Stranger Genius Award, and the Horace Mann Award for her work in utilizing media for social justice. She is a Firelight Media Fellow, WGBH Producer Fellow, Sundance Institute Lab Fellow, and Tribeca All Access Grantee. Tracy’s first major museum installation opened in June 2018 at the Seattle Art Museum. Tracy serves as a Mize Foundation board member, senior programmer at the Seattle International Film Festival, and is in her second term as a Seattle Arts Commissioner. She is a mother of two young men.

Working Films leverages the power of documentary films to advance social justice and environmental protection.

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