Advisory Board for Creative Media

The Fledgling Fund's Advisory Board for Creative Media is comprised of a group of individuals who collectively possess the knowledge and unique perspectives that are key to our growth. The Board's primary focus is to help us critically examine our work and plan for the future. More specifically, its members help to inform our creative media strategy; review key projects; and suggest new funding approaches that can advance the field.  To that end, we have invited a group of individuals to serve for two years that collectively bring the following: an understanding of the history of social media and its impact, experience in new technology, alternative distribution, television broadcast, festival programming, media funding, marketing and public relations, outreach or community engagement, as well as first hand knowledge of the unique challenges and opportunities faced by those producing and using media for social change.

Advisory Board members include:

Barbara Abrash
Director
Public Programs at the Center for Media, Culture and History
Barbara Abrash is a teacher, curator, and independent media producer focusing on the social uses of film, video, and new media, trans-nationally and in multiple venues. Since 1993, she has been Director of Public Programs at the Center for Media, Culture and History, which hosts a wide range of public programs, as well as seminars, conferences, fellows, and research initiatives that bring together artists, theorists and cultural activists representing a diversity of practices. Since 2003, she has also served as Associate Director of NYU's Center for Religion and Media. She is currently also a Research Fellow at the Center for Social Media at American University, focusing on the Ford Foundation public media initiative, "Global Perspectives in a Digital Age."

Nancy Abraham
Vice President of Documentary Programming
HBO
Nancy Abraham is Vice President of Documentary Programming for Home Box Office. She is responsible for the development and production of HBO Documentary Films and Cinemax Reel Life programs that have garnered numerous awards over the years including Primetime Emmy Awards, News and Documentary Emmy Awards, George Foster Peabody Awards, the Alfred I. DuPont Award and the Academy Award. Prior to joining the documentary division in 1995, Abraham was director of film acquisition for HBO, acquiring feature films and other programs for HBO's international channels, and she spent three years in Budapest as Director of Programming for HBO Hungary. Prior to that, Abraham worked at Bravo Cable Network in both acquisition and production capacities. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Vassar and attended Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

Josh Baran
Senior Vice President
Fenton Communications
Josh Baran has been a communications and public relations professional since 1982. He currently is Senior Vice President at Fenton Communications in New York. Josh has created and managed public affairs campaigns involving environmental protection, public health, religious freedom and human rights. He has been intimately involved in many high profile campaigns and projects, counseling leading foundations, non-profit organizations, corporations, media companies, film studios, and music companies. One of his special areas of expertise is in the intersection between entertainment and political, social and religious issues. He has provided special communications guidance and outreach to dozens of films - from major Hollywood features to small independent films and controversial and socially-relevant documentaries.

Nancy Buirski
Film Producer
Nancy Buirski is a film producer, curator and advisor to media companies and film productions. She is the Founder and, until recently, the Director of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and Institute. She is currently an advisor to the festival and serves on its Board of Directors. Prior to launching the festival, Nancy Buirski, was the Foreign Picture Editor at The New York Times, where she published the 1993 Pulitzer Prize feature photo. She was the Keynote Speaker at the United Nations Environmental Program's "Focus on Earth" event in 1994. Buirski published a book of her photographs, Earth Angels: Migrant Children in America in 1995. She was awarded a DeWitt Wallace Fellowship in Media and Journalism at Duke University in 1996. She served on Governor James B. Hunt Jr.'s task force on film production, and is currently a member of the North Carolina Film Council serving under Governor Michael Easley.

Dan Cogan
Executive Director
Impact Partners
Dan Cogan is the Executive Director and co-founder of Impact Partners. He is also the founder of DMC Films, a film production company based in New York. DMC Films is devoted to discovering emerging voices in documentary and fiction film and to exploring new models of independent film finance. In 2006, Mr. Cogan launched the Chrysler Film Project. This screenwriting and directing competition, underwritten by Chrysler, sought to identify an important new voice in American independent film and finance their feature film. In launching the program, Mr. Cogan oversaw the screenplay and directing competition and secured co-financing for Chrysler for the winning film. Before entering the film business, Mr. Cogan worked as a speechwriter for Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and as a journalist, writing for The New Republic, The New York Observer and The Washington Monthly.

Geralyn Dreyfous
Founder
The Philanthropic Initiative
Geralyn has a wide background in the arts, long experience in consulting in the philanthropic sector and is active on many boards and initiatives. She founded the Philanthropic Initiative in Boston, which guides families of wealth in strategic giving opportunities in the film arena. Geralyn taught Documentary and Narrative Writing with Dr. Robert Coles at Harvard University and was a founder of the DoubleTake Community Service Corporation, which publishes DoubleTake Magazine. She also founded the DoubleTake Summer Institute that brought educators, activists and emerging storytellers together to explore the connections between service, moral inquiry and storytelling. A filmmaker as well, Geralyn recently produced The Day My God Died, a documentary on the global trafficking of children for sex and 2004 Academy Award winning Documentary, Born Into Bothels about the children of Calcutta prostitutes that spawned the Kids With Cameras Foundation to sell the children's photography and thus allow them to attend school and leave the brothel.

Rory Kennedy
Co-Founder and President
Moxie Firecracker Films
Rory Kennedy is an Emmy Award winning independent documentary filmmaker, and is co-founder and president of Moxie Firecracker Films. Her films have covered an array of issues ranging from poverty to human rights. Her work has been featured on HBO, A&E, MTV, Lifetime, and PBS. Since Rory Kennedy and Liz Garbus co-founded Moxie Firecracker Films in 1998, they have pursued their unique filmmaking vision, producing documentaries that illuminate larger social issues by telling the stories of everyday people. Before launching Moxie Firecracker Films, Kennedy served as the Executive Director of MayDay Media, the non-profit production and distribution division of Video/Action Fund. Rory Kennedy has served on the Board of Directors for a number of non-profit organizations including The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, The Legal Action Center and the Project Return Foundation. She served as Chairperson of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation Associate Trustees Program from 1993-1995 and has served as a member of the Board of the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation since 1999. She initiated and helped develop the Teacher Transfer Program between the U.S. and Namibia in the fall of 1990 after her work there at the Dobra Resettlement Camp.

Alyce Myatt
Executive Director
Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media (GFEM)
Alyce Myatt is Executive Director of Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media. She previously worked as a consultant providing analysis and strategic planning services for independent media organizations and the philanthropic community. Prior to consulting, she was Vice President of Programming for the Public Broadcasting Service. Her responsibilities included project development and oversight of independent film, PBS Kids, and the Ready To Learn initiative. Previous to re-joining PBS, Ms. Myatt was program officer for media at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Preceding her work at the Foundation she was president of her own consulting firm, providing program development services, strategic planning, and brand management to a variety of clients in television, radio, and multimedia. Ms. Myatt was creative consultant for Sesame Workshop's cable venture and was previously director of Children's Programming for the Public Broadcasting Service.

Tiffany Shlain
Director
The Moxie Institute
Honored by Newsweek as one of the "Women Shaping the 21st Century," Tiffany Shlain is founder of The Webby Awards, co-founder of International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences and an award-winning filmmaker. Her films include "The Tribe" and "Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness," and have been selected at over 100 festivals including Sundance and Tribeca and received over 20 awards. Tiffany lectures worldwide on the Internet and her filmmaking. She is the director of The Moxie Institute, an organization that creates film, books and theater experiences around social issues using emerging technologies. She is working on a new feature documentary, Connected and a hybrid lecture performance for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She is an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow.

Robert West
Co-Founder and Executive Director
Working Films
Robert West is co-founder and executive director of Working Films--committed to linking high quality non-fiction films to serious activism supporting economic, environmental and social justice. Working Films, based in North Carolina and New York City, was co-founded with filmmaker Judith Helfand and has current projects ranging from high profile efforts, including HBO and PBS broadcasts, to regional and local grassroots initiatives. Now in its ninth year, Working Films has partnered or collaborated with Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, Everything's Cool, Occupation Dreamland, Trembling Before G-d, Oil on Ice, Deadline, Thirst, After Innocence, Girl Trouble, Blue Vinyl, Banished and Two Towns Of Jasper on their audience and community engagement and non-traditional distribution efforts.