BOARD OF ADVISORS

Maia Cybelle Carpenter

Maïa Cybelle Carpenter is a moving-image artist and curator. Her films and videos have been exhibited internationally, and selected exhibitions have included: Arts Electronica, Pacific Film Archives, Ontario Cinematheque, Anthology Film Archives, Exit Art Gallery NY, The British Film Institute, Telluride International Experimental Film Festival, The Taiwan Cinematheque, and PBS Television. She has served as visiting curator for the Pleasure Dome in Toronto, Ontario, was the Programming Coordinator for MIX NYC at Anthology Film Archives and has subsequently curated programs for this festival, SF Cinematheque and SF International Film Festival. . She has a BA in Women's Studies/Film Theory from Barnard College, Columbia University (1997), and has a MFA from the Film/Video/New Media Dept. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2001), she currently sits on the Board of Directors of Canyon Cinema and works for an emerging biotech company called Cerimon Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Bridget Maria Goodman

Bridget Goodman is a Senior Viewpainter (3D Texture Artist) with George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic in San Francisco. Her career in film began in 1994 as a Rotoscope Artist on Casper and Forrest Gump. In 1996 she began Viewpainting. Her works include Pirates of the Caribbean, at Worlds End, Transformers and currently, The Spiderwick Chronicles. In addition, Goodman is an accomplished painter and photographer. Her work has been published in Cinefex, TV Guide, Fast Company, Breakthrough, and German Art Zines. Bridget has exhibited photography and paintings yearly since 1991. A graduate of Art and Film Studies from San Francisco State University, Goodman studied abroad at the famed Braunschweig School of Art, in Germany.

Leanne A. Grossman

Leanne A. Grossman is director of communications at the Global Fund for Women. Her work with the Global Fund has taken her to Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, where she met with women's organizations on a range of relevant issues.. Prior to the Global Fund, she worked with NGOs in the former Soviet states on environmental justice and women's rights, and was a founding member of the NIS-US Women's Consortium. She has an MA in international policy with a concentration in Soviet affairs at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and a BA in criminology from the University of California at Berkeley. Leanne is conversational in Spanish and Russian and also serves on the Board of Directors of the Global Greengrants Fund.

Lori Halloran

Lori Halloran is an award-winning television producer who has spent the past twelve years at PBS. Starting at KVIE-TV in Sacramento, she developed and served as Executive Producer and Reporter for the regional series Central Valley Chronicles, created Off Limits, a national adventure series, and Discover California, a travel, food, and wine program, both of which received multiple nominations from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In 2003 Lori joined KQED-TV, where she has produced 37 in-depth, documentary-style profiles on performing and visual artists for the weekly arts program Spark, including a program featuring performance artist Sha Sha Higby that won an Emmy in 2004. Additionally, in 2005 she helped launch The Josh Kornbluth Show, a new weekly interview and entertainment. She produced 46 original episodes and garnered two Emmy nominations for her work, wrapping up in 2007 in order to complete post-production on a new baby daughter, Hayley… her most challenging work to date.

Julie Homan

Julie Homan has spent the past four years as the Senior Cause Marketing Coordinator for the Breast Cancer Fund. She is enthusiastic about helping to prevent breast cancer by eliminating the environmental causes of the disease. She believes in the power of public outreach and education and knows that the Breast Cancer Fund’s relationship with LUNA Bar is helping to influence positive social change in this world. Her interests include listening to music, watching movies, hiking, snowboarding, mountain biking, and she is a member of Team LUNA Chix Bay Area Mountain Bike.

Shalonda Ingram

Shalonda Ingram is a strategist, producer, social entrepreneur and pro-activist who has enhanced some of the Bay Area’s most treasured productions. Her works include Aya de Leon’s annual Love Fest, Destiny Arts Center’s Full Circle, Laney College’s Tribute to Katherine Dunham, SF Pride, Micia Mosely’s one-woman show, Where My Girls At? and numerous Butterfly Production events. She is also Founder of Nursha Project™, an Artist Strategy, Manifestation Design & Production firm that operates from a collaborative model, as well as co-founder of Born Brown: All Rights Reserved®. Both organizations are vehicles for socio-political change that embody Shalonda’s affinity for creative arts, live performance and authentic Hip Hop.

Marla Leech

Marla Renee Leech is a filmmaker, educator and playright. Her work includes "Knockers" (2005) a campy musical about ...well... knockers; "Breaking' the Glass: The ABL 1996-1998" (2000) profiling women's pro-basketball; "It's a Boy! Journeys from Female to Male" (2003) an exploration on women who later became men; "Mercury Rising" (2007) about the origins and effects of Mercury in California, "Cigarra Capoerista" (2007) on Marcia Cigarra, first woman to reach the highest cord in capoeira, and "Strings Attached" a portrait of five female professional guitarists. She teaches all facets of video production at Laney College in downtown Oakland, BAVC, and City College of San Francisco.

Karen Lum

Karen Lum began filmmaking in her freshman year at Skyline High School in a digital video production class. She later worked on production sets with industry equipment through the Factory program at Youth Sounds BAVC. Her third film, Slip of the Tongue, garnered several awards, including the Golden Gate Youth Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival and a Regional Emmy Award for Best Youth Segment. A recent high school graduate, she will attend Stanford University in the fall.

Kirthi Nath

Kirthi Nath is an award winning South Asian filmmaker, writer, educator and curator. Her films have shown in several festivals and events including a solo show at The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Moondance International Women's Festival, San Francisco Asian American Film Festival, Berkeley Women of Color festival and Ladyfest (Olympia, Scotland, Bay Area and Texas). As an artist, her tactile and dreamlike works explore female subjectivity, memory, desire, and racial and sexual identities. As an educator, Kirthi teaches video at the Bay Area Video Coalition where she strives to empower young people to become both producer and audience. As an active member in the art community, Kirthi has appeared on several panels and been a guest juror for film festivals.

Janis Plotkin

Janis Plotkin is a seasoned film festival veteran whose life-long commitment to film began with her prior work as a community organizer. Plotkin produced the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival from 1982 through 2002, building a diverse and successful festival along with a broadcast partnership with KQED. In 1998, she was tapped to curate the monthly screenings at the prestigious San Francisco Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, She co-produced the first ever Jewish Film Festival in Moscow in the early months of Gorbachev’s “perestroika” in 1990. A leader in the field of independent Jewish subject cinema, Plotkin co-wrote, edited and published Independent Jewish Film, a resource guide about the more than 600 films presented in the Festival. She currently teaches college-level film classes at Stanford and San Francisco State University, serves as film programmer of documentary and world cinema for the Mill Valley Film Festival and consults on a number of festivals.

Michella Rivera-Gravage

Michella Rivera-Gravage is an artist that brings together both old and new media to tell personal and public stories. Her current artwork combines her interests in theoretical and political knowledge with her desire to build interactive systems. Michella earned her MFA in Digital Art/New Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Before coming to UC Santa Cruz, she earned a BA in Rhetoric and Women Studies at University of California, Berkeley. She is currently the Web Producer at the Center For Asian American Media.

Casondra Sobieralski

Casondra Sobieralski is an artist and storyteller via video, web and performance work. She has shown in Western Pennsylvania, Bing Gallery in Oakland, StartSOMA Gallery in San Francisco, the Berkeley Art Center, and does site specific work outside the gallery system. She has worked with CNRS/the Louvre doing digital reconstruction work and documentation for French archeologists in Egypt. She has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, UC Berkeley, the Bay Area Discovery Museum, JUST THINK, the Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland (MOCHA), and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Her art production credits include Three River’s Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and several independent films. Casondra holds a B.A. in Art History from the University of Pittsburgh, an MFA in Conceptual and Information Arts from San Francisco State University.

Beth Strachan

Beth Strachan has served on the LUNAFEST Board of Advisors since 2005. She brings over 15 years' experience in marketing communications and fund development within the world of nonprofits and socially responsible businesses. Currently, she is the Director of Development for VolunteerMatch, an online community of nearly 50,000 nonprofits and over 1 million volunteers connecting to make the world a better place. She has also held director-level positions at leading institutions including the Breast Cancer Fund, Earth Island Institute, and Working Assets. She holds a degree in creative and technical writing. When she’s not in front of a film screen or with her nose in a book, she can be found enjoying the outdoors.

Jenni Tsoi

An eleven-year Pixar Animation Studios veteran, Jenni Tsoi currently manages both the Lighting and Effects Departments on a feature film set for release in 2008. Ms. Tsoi started in Pixar’s Shorts/Commercials division in 1995, contributing to commercials for such clients as Hallmark and the Wrigley Company. She transitioned to feature films where she has held various production roles - her feature film credits include A Bug's Life (1998); Toy Story 2 (1999); Monsters, Inc. (2001); Finding Nemo (2003) and CARS (2006).