Who are we? A collaborative team
Here for your
VOICE & Story.
Internal Team • Filmmaker Facilitators • Interns • Advisors • Consultants
Danielle Rose
Founder & Producer
Danielle Rose is an award-winning documentary filmmaker from Brooklyn, N.Y.
Her debut feature documentary, “In Our Backyard,” investigates sex trafficking in Brooklyn. It has won 6 awards: Best Documentary and Audience Choice Award at The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, Best Documentary and Audience Choice Award at The Northwest of NYC and Best Documentary at The Big Apple Film Festival. She has spoken at over 30 screenings including: the United Nations, NYPD Intelligence Bureau, Brooklyn Public Library, and the Brooklyn Historical Society. The film has helped pass anti-trafficking legislation.
Danielle’s documentary short, “Little Ellis Island,” was published by CBS and The New York Post, receiving grants from the Pulitzer Foundation and Columbia University.
She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and obtained her M.S. from the Columbia Journalism School. She is a teacher, having taught at Pratt Institute and created multiple documentary and photography programs at middle schools in New York City. Danielle covers stories ranging from, sexual exploitation, social inequalities, immigration, detention, homelessness, mental health and alternative lifestyles.
Danielle’s company “In Our Backyard Productions” has produced 6 films, having grown to become not only a Documentary Production Company, a Media platform but also this very special non profit: giving people and communities the resources to tell and share their own story.
Team
Katrina Eroen
Storyteller
Katrina studied both Theatre and American History at Barnard College of Columbia University and has found a way to interweave her two passions through forging a career in storytelling and activism. She is currently an actor and writer living in Los Angeles. Katrina's most current work is a comedy inspired by her Cherokee heritage as she is a Citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Previously, she worked as a law clerk at Feldman Browne Olivares, APC. A firm specializing in representing women, including those who sought help through Women in Film and the #TimesUp Legal Defense fund, in equal pay and sexual harassment/assault claims. She recently left her role as Head of Development at Get Lit - Words Ignite -- a non-profit that brings spoken word poetry curriculums into mainly Title I schools. In her 2016 post-election despair, Katrina co-founded a women's empowerment organization: Her Time Now.
Allegra Chen-Carrel
Global Community Organizer
Allegra Chen-Carrel is a researcher whose work focuses on intergroup dynamics. She currently works for the Sustaining Peace Project at the Earth Institute's Advanced Consortium for Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity and is pursuing a PhD in Social-Organizational Psychology at Columbia University's Teachers College. Previously, she worked for community organizations in New York City and in Batey Libertad in the Dominican Republic. She holds a M.A. in Global Thought from Columbia University in New York, and a M.A. in Immigration Management from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.
Victoria Pannell
Storyteller
Victoria Pannell is a 21-year-old activist from Harlem, NY. Victoria has become nationally known for her work in fighting child sex trafficking and advocacy against gun violence. Her PSA ad on child trafficking received a Pollie Award which is voted on and presented by American Association of Political Consultants. In 2012- 2015, Victoria served as Northeast Regional Director of Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network Youth Movement. In July of 2016, Victoria did a Ted Talk in San Diego focusing on the atrocities of human trafficking. As Youth Outreach Ambassador for the Women’s March, Victoria helped organize the March 14, 2018 National School Walkout, a call to action for gun reform, after the Stoneman Douglass High School shooting. Victoria feels the only way change will happen for impoverished young people is giving them tools that will have a positive impact on their future. She has been featured by NowThis, Eyewitness News, MSNBC and Spectrum News NY1, and highlighted by several major publications including Crain’s New York Business 20 under 20, Essence, The Root, Teen Vogue, and The Daily News. Victoria is currently a Pre-Law undergraduate student at Duke University double majoring in Public Policy and Psychology with a certificate in Civic Engagement and Social Change.
Jenai Richards
Global Community Organizer
Bio:
Kathleen Caulderwood
Documentary Filmmaker
Kathleen Caulderwood is an award-winning documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York.
She has produced and shot for the Guardian, VICE News, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, Agence France-Presse, the Village Voice, Mashable and other outlets, covering everything from domestic counterterrorism, the Kashmir conflict to California's bee theft epidemic and homeschool proms.
Filmmaker Facilitators
Sebastian Barreneche
Project Advisor
Location: Colombia & Brooklyn, New York
Sebastian Barreneche is a social entrepreneur and creative digital strategist. He brings more than nine years of direct experience leading strategic and creative social impact campaigns, producing engaging and dynamic content, and cultivating important community partnerships. Sebastian is passionate about leveraging new media and technology for social good, with a focus on accessibility, inclusivity, and sustainability. He has produced two award-winning social documentaries, ‘#Occupy Skepticism” and “A Beleza do Suburbio”. Sebastian currently serves as the Senior Development and Content Manager for United We Dream and United We Dream Action, the largest immigrant youth-led network in the U.S. In the past, he has worked with non-profits such as Make the Road New York, the Red Hot Organization, Jeremy’s Heroes, and the Global Nomads Group, using video and participatory media to catalyze social justice initiatives. Sebastian has strategized creative digital campaigns that engage millions, mobilize tens of thousands of people, and fundraise millions of dollars towards progressive causes. He believes that the biggest untapped resource is the potential in our communities and believes deeply in mobilizing resources and investing in access and opportunity for communities to build power with resilient joy and creativity. He is originally from Medellin, Colombia and is based out of Brooklyn, New York.
Cydney Tucker
Field Producer
Location: Atlanta, Georgia
Cydney Tucker is a journalist, filmmaker and freelance photographer currently based in Atlanta documenting the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement and COVID-19 as it disproportionately impacts Black Americans.
She has written and produced content for a variety of legacy and digital media organizations including CBS News, NBC News, Al Jazeera International (AJ+), and RYOT.
Cydney is presently working on two films for the New York Times Presents’s Hulu/FX documentary series. Her current personal projects include producing limited documentary videos and photo-series capturing Black Joy.
Lorraine A. Ustaris
Field Producer & Educator
Location: Philadelphia
Lorraine A. Ustaris is committed to multimedia work that lies at the intersection of education and journalism.
Mearig G. Geb
Field Producer
Location: Norway, Israel & Eritrea
Bio:
Interns
Juliette Velasquez
Location: Georgia, USA
Juliette Velasquez is a 16 year old aspiring filmmaker from Honduras. She is a high school student who is inspired by those whose stories we often don’t hear about and seeks for new perspectives.
Advisors
Juan Sanchez
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Ana Morse
Ana Morse is a Costa Rican-American writer with a diverse background covering journalism, communications and non-profit management. Early in her career she reported on the media, marketing and advertising sectors across Greater China; had a regular design column in the South China Morning Post; oversaw six publications as Managing Editor at Southeast Asia’s leading lifestyle and entertainment media firm; and freelanced as an investigative journalist while overseeing corporate communications for Interpublic Group’s DraftWorlwide across Asia Pacific. It was her investigation into human trafficking in Southeast Asia that brought her to work in human rights. Ana launched a fair-trade partnership with Vietnamese women, exporting their embroidered accessories to Hong Kong, New York and Costa Rica. Her sex trafficking research broadened to cover Latin America, both as a sex tourist destination and following the trafficking routes along the Pan American Highway. She eventually landed in New York where she served as President of ECPAT-USA, the US arm of an international children’s rights network fighting child sexual exploitation. It was at ECPAT where she got a taste of storytelling through film when she co-produced and -directed the award-winning documentary short What I’ve Been Through is not Who I Am. She is currently investigating the illegal deportation and incarceration of Latin Americans by the United States during World War II.
Alan Berliner
Alan Berliner's uncanny ability to combine experimental cinema, artistic purpose, and popular appeal in compelling film essays has made him one of America's most acclaimed independent filmmakers. Berliner’s experimental documentary films, Letter to the Editor (2019), First Cousin Once Removed (2013), Wide Awake (2016), The Sweetest Sound (2001), Nobody’s Business (1996), Intimate Stranger (1991), and The Family Album (1986), have been broadcast all over the world, and received awards, prizes, and retrospectives at many major international film festivals. The Florida Film Festival called him “the modern master of personal documentary filmmaking.”
Over the years, Berliner’s films have become part of the core curriculum for documentary filmmaking and film history classes at universities worldwide and are in the permanent collections of many film societies, festivals, libraries, colleges and museums. All of his films are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. In 2006, the International Documentary Association honored him with an International Trailblazer Award “for creativity, innovation, originality, and breakthrough in the field of documentary cinema.” Berliner has won three Emmy Awards and received seven Emmy nominations from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In addition to his work in film, Berliner has also produced a substantial body of photographic, audio and video installation works.
Berliner was born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens and lives in Manhattan with his wife Shari and son Eli.
Victoria Redel
Victoria Redel is the author of five books of fiction and three books of poetry, a new collection, Paradise, forthcoming in 2022. Her work has been widely anthologized and translated into 10 languages. Redel's fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in numerous magazines including Granta.com, The Harvard Review, The New York Times, The L.A. Times, One Story, O the Oprah Magazine, and Noon. Redel is on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College. She has taught in the graduate writing program at Columbia University, Vermont College of Fine Arts and was the McGee Professor at Davidson College. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center.
Rico Speight
Rico Speight has a diversified career in directing, producing, writing and editing for film, theater, and online. His documentary, WHO'S GONNA TAKE THE WEIGHT?, on African American and Black South African youth screened at Cannes Film Festival in 1999. A sequel, WHERE ARE THEY NOW?, broadcast nationally in South Africa. Speight’s first documentary,THE PEOPLE UNITED, profiled Boston’s black community in the wake of the murders of 14 black women: that film was recently acquired by the Criterion Collection. Speight’s narrative credits include CHOICES, an original short starring Samuel L Jackson. Speight’s theater credits include the theatrical production of Aime Cesaire’s A SEASON IN THE CONGO presented at LaMaMa Theatre. His original play ROBESON AND DUNHAM: ART & ACTIVISM 101 opened at the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York. In 2003, Speight traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo to shoot the documentary NEW GENERATION, on developments in the Congo from the POV of Congolese youth. Speight is currently producer/director of the documentary REDISCOVERING FANON and codirector/coproducer/editor of the documentary MAXINE POWELL AND THE MOTOWN MYSTIQUE. For a decade, Speight taught documentary aesthetics and hands-on production at Sarah Lawrence College. Speight earned his Masters at Emerson College in Boston.
Marek Fuchs
Marek Fuchs is the Executive Director of The Investigative Journalism and Justice Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. “County Lines” columnist for The New York Times for six years and also wrote columns for The Wall Street Journal’s “Marketwatch” and for Yahoo!. Author of A Cold-Blooded Business, a book called “riveting” by Kirkus Reviews. His most recent book, Local Heroes, also earned widespread praise, including from ABC News, which called it “elegant…graceful…lively and wonderful.” Recipient of numerous awards and named the best journalism critic in the nation by Talking Biz website at The University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Regularly speaks on business and journalism issues at venues ranging from annual meetings of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers to PBS and National Public Radio. When not writing or teaching, he serves as a volunteer firefighter.
Carlos García Cintrón, PSYD
Psychologist & Artist