Vanessa Arteaga is a ten-year film industry veteran working in content development and distribution. Vanessa is currently the Executive Producer for Jaman - an online film community for people passionate about world cinema - where she is charged with strategic acquisitions for the company and plays a role in online audience development, marketing and community outreach. Prior to Jaman, Vanessa served as a senior development executive with Wellspring Media, formerly known as a leading theatrical film, television and video distribution company with an acclaimed independent film library. Following the 2006 acquisition of Wellspring by The Weinstein Co., Vanessa was the acquisitions and development consultant for LIME Media, a Revolution Company. She served as Executive Producer on such projects as the documentary Unknown White Male (theatrically released in 2006), a film that chronicles the mesmerizing journey of a man who spontaneously loses his memory and has no recollection of his past. The film was chosen as one of the fifteen Academy Award finalists for Best Documentary with coverage in the New York Times, which hailed it as a ‘thought-stirring documentary… that gets you to thinking about how our lives are built from wisps of memory and markers of memory like photographs.’ She also served as an Executive Producer on the feature-length documentary film Tarnation and secured it as a co-production for Wellspring. The film went on to receive worldwide acclaim, including the award for Best Documentary by the National Society of Film Critics; the award for Best Documentary at the Los Angeles Film Festival; the Sutherland Trophy at the London Film Festival, and the Emerging Filmmaker Award by the International Documentary Association. Tarnation was also nominated for Best Documentary of the year for both the IFP Gotham Awards and the IFP Spirit Awards. Vanessa managed the company’s content development strand, tracking documentaries and lifestyle programming in the production/post-production phase, ultimately securing and packaging them as a co-production property for distribution through Wellspring’s theatrical, television and home entertainment channels. Prior projects include Devil’s Playground, and Fashion Victim: The Killing of Gianni Versace for Cinemax, Mama Africa for PBS, Muddy Waters: Can’t Be Satisfied for American Masters, Who is Alan Smithee? for AMC, Howard Hughes: His Movies and His Women for TCM and several pledge programs for PBS.

Phoebe Eng
Vice Chair, Ms. Foundation for Women
Executive Director, Creative Counsel

Phoebe Eng has built strategic partnerships at the intersection of media, communications, and advocacy for over 15 years with partners such as Working Mother Media, Cox Communications, a range of Fortune 100 companies such as Procter & Gamble, IBM, and JP Morgan Chase, Dell Computers and Hewlett Packard, foundations and public agencies. Eng is a Co-Founder Emeritus of the national think tank, The Opportunity Agenda, and is now head of Creative Counsel, a media and communications group that taps the potential of the media, arts and creative communities for social justice causes.

Eng sits on the Advisory Board of Working Mother Media’s Best Companies for Multicultural Women initiative, which produces an annual best practices list, and is the Vice Chair of the Ms. Foundation for Women, where she also helped conceptualize a fund aimed at elevating the voices of women, especially women of color, in public policy. Eng directed the The Social Change Communications Project, a research initiative exploring the role of media and communications in social justice advocacy. Eng received the New York City Mayor’s Innovator Award, the Arthur T. Vanderbilt Medal, and a Distinguished Service Award from NYU School of Law. Eng started her career as a mergers and acquisitions attorney in New York, Paris, and Hong Kong. She is the author of Warrior Lessons: An Asian American Woman’s Journey into Power (Simon & Schuster) and contributed the forward to Yell-oh Girls!: Emerging Voices Explore Culture, Identity, and Growing Up Asian American, by Vickie Nam.

Leslie Fields-Cruz
Grants Manager, National Black Programming Consortium

Leslie A. Fields-Cruz has worked in the independent film and theatre-in-education communities as an actor, producer, director, educator, and administrator. She served as the Membership Director at AIVF, supervised student productions at New York University's Television Center, and is currently serving as the Grants Manager at the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC). She has also worked for the Creative Capital and the Rockefeller Foundations administrating the Multi Arts Production (MAP) Fund. As the Artistic Director at City Lights Youth Theatre she produced and/or directed several plays and musicals including "Susannah and the Star Thing" by Susan Birkenhead, "Best Friends" by William Holt and Aaron Hagin, "The Wrestling Season" by Laurie Brooks, and the US premiere of "Sparkle Shark" by Philip Ridley. She continues to serve as an artist/teacher having just recently led a 6-week workshop in beginning acting at the Playground Theatre in White Plains. Mrs. Fields-Cruz holds an MA in Cinema Studies from New York University, received her Acting training at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, and holds a BA in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. She has served as an panelist/evaluator for ITVS, the New York Department of Cultural Affairs (Cultural Challenge), and ART/NY's Nancy Quinn Fund. She is married and the happy mother of two beautiful girls.

back to top

Kathryn F. Galan, Secretary
Executive Director, National Association of Latino Independent Producers

Kathryn F. Galan is the Executive Director of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers, a national non-profit arts services organization dedicated to the support and development of Latino and Latina film, television and documentary makers. Now an independent producer, she is Executive Producer of EARLY BIRD SPECIAL, a low-budget black comedy directed by Mark Jean ("7th Heaven") that stars Anita Gillette and Max Perlich, and is also working on a number of other features in progress. Previously, Ms. Galan produced FRENCH KISS with Meg Ryan and Working Title Films, and for two years, partnered with Ryan in Prufrock Pictures at Twentieth Century Fox to develop and produce feature films that examined contemporary themes and issues. Between 1989 and 1993, Ms. Galan was Vice President, Production for Walt Disney Studio's motion picture division Hollywood Pictures and prior to that spent seven years at Atlantic Entertainment Group in acquisitions, purchasing the rights to distribute foreign and independent films in the U.S. and Canada. She eventually moved into the role of Senior Vice President, Production, supervising the production and development of hip low-budget, high-quality features, and worked on over twenty movies there. Ms. Galan graduated Magna Cum Laude from Amherst College in 1980 as an English major. She moved to Los Angeles to study film and television history, aesthetics and critical theory at UCLA. She grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan and is the mother of a son Wynn Vicente, born in 1995. She is a past board member of the AFI Third Decade Council and now serves on the Boards of Directors of the International Documentary Association and Women Make Movies.

back to top

Michelle Halsell
CEO and Co-Founder, Missing Pixel

Michelle Halsell is the CEO and a Co-Founder of Missing Pixel. A producer and a filmmaker, Michelle brings over 12 years of experience in building teams and leading projects in exploring new technologies and interactive story telling. Throughout her career, she has developed and led projects for ITVS, the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB), NEH, and Star Schools Grants for the U.S. department of Education. In addition her work as a visual artist has premiered in projects at The Kitchen and 651 Arts. Her ongoing collaborations with award-winning filmmakers, musicians, and Tony nominated performers over the years has led to the development of web sites, CD-Roms, DVDs, digital video projects and interactive installations.  Through Missing Pixel, Michelle continues her goals to create media that explores and tests pre-existing boundaries of new media while reflecting both diversity and innovation. She is equally committed to developing new audiences and addressing issues of accessibility at all points in the production process.  Ms. Halsell received her Masters Degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. She has presented to audiences ranging from Harvard University to PBS Annual conferences in San Francisco and Nashville. Ms. Halsell teaches graduate seminars in Interactive Documentary production and Technology and Social Activism at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

back to top

Caroline Libresco
Senior Programmer, Sundance Film Festival

Since 2001, Caroline Libresco has been Senior Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival, where she selects features in all sections, focusing on documentary and international, and acts as conduit between artists and industry. She serves on the leadership team for Sundance’s new Creative Producing Initiative. Previously, she was an executive at ITVS, the San Francisco Film Festival, and the SF Jewish Film Festival. She produced the award-winning documentary, SUNSET STORY; the featurette BARRIER DEVICE; associate-produced the HBO documentary CAT DANCERS; and was developing producer on THE GRACE LEE PROJECT. She co-wrote and produced FANCI’S PERSUASION, directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld. Caroline founded “Planet Cinema,” annually presenting an environmental sidebar at the Seattle Film Festival. She serves as consultant to Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership and U.S. Delegate for the Zurich Film Festival. Caroline holds a B.A. from Oberlin College, an M.A. in History of Religion from Harvard, and an M.F.A. from UCLA Film School.

back to top

Marian Masone, Treasurer
Managing Director of Festivals and Associate Director of Programming,
The Film Society of Lincoln Center

Marian Masone is Managing Director of Festivals and Associate Director of Programming for the Film Society of Lincoln Center, producer of the New York Film Festival. She is a member of the selection committee for the New Directors/New Films Festival, which is presented with The Museum of Modern Art in New York. She curates the New York Video Festival and is on the programming committee of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. She organizes new and retrospective programs, as well as on-going series such as Image Innovators at the Film Society's Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. In addition she is on advisory boards for the Boston International Festival of Women's Cinema, the N.Y. Expo of Short Film & Video, and the Hamptons International Film Festival. She previously curated Philadelphia's Festival of Independents, presented programs of American media makers at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, and has served on various juries and panels including Art on Film at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Black Maria Film Festival, NYSCA, and the Hamptons International Film Festival. She has a B.A. in Theater from Marymount Manhattan College and an M.A. in cinema studies from NYU and writes on media for various publications.

back to top

back to top

Esther Robinson
Filmmaker and Producer

back to top