Anayansi Prado was born in Panama and holds a B.A. in Broadcasting and Film from Boston University. Short after graduation, Anayansi moved to New York City, where she worked for the non-profit organization Women Make Movies and the indie production company Castle Hill Productions. In 1998 she moved to Los Angeles, California, to pursue a career as a filmmaker.

Anayansi’s main ambition is to produce and direct documentaries about the experiences and challenges Latinos face everyday. With this purpose in mind, she founded IMPACTO FILMS, a production company geared toward the production of documentaries with a social impact.

In December 2004, through Impacto Films successfully completed her first documentary production, Maid in America, a documentary about the lives of Latina domestic workers in Los Angeles. Made possible by a generous grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Maid in America is distributed by the reputable Women Make Movies.

Maid in America has its national broadcast in the United States on the PBS series Independent Lens in November 2005. This wonderful film has screened in various festivals, including The Habana Film Festival in Cuba, the Los Angeles Film Festival, Full Frame Film Festival in North Carolina and the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, CA, among many more.

Recently, Anayansi served as Executive Producer for the upcoming Discovery en Español documentary series Voces de Cambio which takes an intimate look at humanitarian issues in the Latino community in the U.S. Each episodes focuses on the humanitarian work being done by various Latino celebrities around current issues such as education, immigration and health care. Interviewed celebrities include Carlos Santana and Edward James Olmos.

Through the years, Anayansi has kept active in the documentary filmmaking community by getting involved with other projects. In November 2003, Anayansi served as director/producer/camera operator for a documentary on the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, a 12 day cross-country bus trip from Los Angeles to Washington D.C., geared towards bringing awareness and change to the working conditions of immigrants in the United States. In 2005, she worked with veteran documentary filmmaker Lyn Goldfarb as a camera operator and post-production coordinator on the PBS documentary mini-series California and the American Dream: The New Los Angeles, which aired in 2006.

Anayansi has been a recipient of a Rockefeller Media Fellowship, a Paul Robeson Grant for Independent Media, a Pacific Pioneer Fund Grant, Chicken and Egg Pictures Grant and a Fledgling Fund Grant. She was named one of three up-and-coming Latina filmmakers in the United States by Latina Magazine. As of most recently, Anayansi was awarded an ITVS development grant and a 2008 Creative Capital Media Grant for her current documentary projectGive Us Your Retired, Your Rich, Your Americans.

In August 2003, she was a fellow at the 1st ever Latino Producers Academy organized by The National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP). Anayansi has been honored to present her work and be a guest speaker at various universities as well as non-profit organizations and museums around the country. She’s lectured on independent filmmaking, immigrants’ issues and women’s labor rights.

An award winning filmmaker, Anayansi is a proud member of the International Documentary Association (IDA) and National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP). Anayansi is currently in production of her third independent documentary Give Us Your Retired, Your Rich, Your Americans about the growing phenomenon of Americans retiring to Panama and the effects they are having in the local Panamanian culture. Anayansi lives in Los Angeles.

Wendy Ettinger is an award winning producer, director and casting director. Her first documentary, The War Room, directed by Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, was nominated for an Academy Award®, and their second collaboration, Moon Over Broadway, was cited as Best Documentary of '98.

Her first feature film, Eye of God, directed by Tim Blake Nelson, premiered at Sundance. Baby I'm Yours, her directorial debut which follows the lives of three first-time mothers, led to an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show "What Your Mother Never Told You About Motherhood."

Ms. Ettinger served as Consulting Producer on Al Franken: God Spoke, directed by Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob (executive produced by D.A. Pennebaker), which debuted theatrically in 2006. Ms. Ettinger is currently collaborating with director Douglas Keeve (Unzipped) on a feature-length documentary The Gramercy Park Hotel.

She and her husband Derek Mclane were the recipients of the 2006 Michael Mendelson Award. She is on the board of Working Films and serves on the Board of the 52nd Street Project, a non-profit organization that brings theater professionals together with inner city children. Ms. Ettinger also serves on the board of the Educational Foundation of America. She lives in New York City with her husband Derek Mclane and their three children.

An award winning filmmaker, activist and educator, Judith is known for her ability to take heedless corporate behavior and chemical exposure and make it personal, highly charged and very entertaining.

The Uprising of 34 (co-directed with George Stoney), Blue Vinyl (for which she and co-director Daniel Gold were nominated for two Emmys), and its Peabody award winning prequel A Healthy Baby Girl (a five-year-old video diary about her experience with DES related cancer) all explore home, class, corporate accountability, intergenerational relationships and the ever shrinking border between what is personal and what is part of the public record.

Judith just completed co-directing/co-producing Everything's Cool, a feature documentary about global warming to be released November 2007 and is in development on a feature doc about "unnatural disasters" and the politics of "crisis" through the story of the 1995 Chicago heat wave. She is co-founder of Working Films and Chicken & Egg Pictures. She is full-time faculty at New York University's Undergraduate Program of Film and Television. On leave for 2007-08 she is currently teaching "environmental documentary making" as an Artist-in-Residence at University of Wisconsin, Madison.

For the past ten years, Julie has produced documentaries on health and environmental issues for television. In 2002, Julie co-produced the Sundance award winning HBO documentary Blue Vinyl -- a film in search of the truth about vinyl (PVC), America’s most popular plastic. The film is part detective story, part eco-activism documentary, and part rollicking comedy all rolled into one.

In 2005, Julie founded Chicken and Egg Pictures with Working Films Co-Founder Judith Helfand and Working Films Board member Wendy Ettinger. Chicken and Egg Pictures is an innovative film fund and production company that provides grants and executive producer services for select nonfiction and fiction film projects by women filmmakers.

Julie also serves on the board of The Center for Environmental Health. She lives in San Francisco and is the mother of two young daughters.

Heather Courtney is a filmmaker, cinematographer and photographer based in Austin, Texas. Her recently completed Letters From the Other Side, which uses cross-border video letters to tell the immigration story from the perspective of the women left behind in Mexico, premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in January 2006, screened at the South by Southwest International Film Festival (SXSW), and was funded by a Fulbright Grant and a grant from the Independent Television Service (ITVS). It is currently screening all over Austin, Texas at community-based venues with support from a grant from the City of Austin.

Her previous film, Los Trabajadores/The Workers, won the Audience Award at SXSW in 2001 and was broadcast nationally on the PBS series Independent Lens in 2003. In addition, it has screened at over 40 national and international film festivals and conferences, as well as at countless grassroots screenings in conjunction with immigrant rights groups all over Austin and the rest of Texas. She is currently producing the Texas segment of a national PBS documentary on the health insurance crisis.

Prior to receiving her graduate degree in film, Heather spent eight years writing and photographing for the United Nations and several refugee and immigrant rights organizations, including in the Rwandan refugee camps after the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Kevin Leadingham has established himself as both a steadfast and versatile documentary and Reality Television producer and director. Kevin first turned his attention to documentaries with the award winning documentary A Refugee and Me, shot on location in Thailand, followed by Witch Way to Hollywood, a look into the making of a Blair Witch Project spoof. Kevin then served as Field Producer and Videographer on U. S. Marshals: The Real Story and The Hunt for Amazing Treasures III for TLC, and Lifeline: Las Vegas for Discovery Communications.

He has produced two independent documentaries: Maid In America, a portrait of Latina domestic workers in Los Angeles, and Mama’s Gold, which documents a privately run orphanage in southern China.

Kevin’s resume also includes producing and camera credits for programs such as: A Second Look (E!); FM Nation (MTV); My Life is a Sitcom (ABC Family Channel); The Season: Oakland Raiderettes, Sidelines: LA Hoops and Totally Hooked (ESPN); NASCAR DRIVER: 360 (FX); Underweigh: Life Aboard the U.S.S. Peliliu (Travel Channel); Berman & Berman (Discovery Health Channel); The Bravest (Syndicated); Wife Swap (ABC); Playing It Straight and Next Great Champ (Fox). Kevin recently completed as Supervising Producer on the TLC reality series Sheer Dallas and is now working on a yet untitled program for A&E.

Born and raised in Mexico City, Alejandro Valdes-Rochin has been based in Los Angeles for the past nine years. As a teen he landed his first job as an apprentice editor for Mexico's first financial newscast, Monitor Financiero. Since moving to Los Angeles in the late 90s, Alejandro has worked in the cutting rooms of feature films such as 300, Moulin Rouge, Road to Perdition and A Day Without a Mexican.

In the recent years, Alejandro decided to explore editing documentaries. He edited Maid In America, a documentary on the life of Latin American maids in Los Angeles, which screened at several festivals and aired on nationally on PBS's Independent Lens. Next, he worked as editor and co-producer on Dorothy Day: Don't Call Me A Saint, a documentary which explores the life of a single mom and Catholic anarchist who the Vatican is currently considering for canonization. Dorothy Day premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Lisa Y. Garibay was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, attended Amherst College in Massachusetts, and now lives in Los Angeles. Garibay produced the feature film Robbing Peter, which world premiered in competition at the 2004 Los Angeles Film Festival. Robbing Peter received four 2005 Independent Spirit Award nominations including one for the John Cassavetes Award, given to the producers of the Best Feature Under $500,000.

Garibay’s writing about music, film and Latino culture appears regularly in Back Stage, FILMMAKER Magazine, Dazed and Confused magazine, Mean Street magazine, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, SOMA magazine, and the Film Independent's FIND magazine and website. In 2001, Garibay was awarded a fellowship with the Sundance Institute’s Arts Writing Program. She is the founder and editor of ThenItMustBeTrue.com, an alternative outlet for journalists, filmmakers and musicians to discuss their art.

In 2003, Garibay’s feature script All For One was selected to participate in the first-ever National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP)/New York Latino Film Festival Latino Writers Lab, where it secured representation by ICM. Over the past four years, Garibay has been directing and producing the documentary Sisters y Santos, focusing on activists battling violence against women along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Garibay has also served as music supervisor on Robbing Peter, Carlos Portugal's feature East Side Story and the documentary Downtown Locals, which world premiered at the 2006 Slamdance Film Festival. Garibay's passion for music led her to create the management and publicity company LARGetc. along with her sister (a photographer) and brother (a musician/sound engineer).

In 2004, Garibay partnered with noted indie film consultant Peter Broderick to create FilmsToSeeBeforeYouVote.org. Garibay is also the founder of CineMás, a non-profit initiative linking independent film with education and community development. In addition, she is a co-founder of Grassroots Screening, which aims to connect social issues films with activist organizations and niche audiences to affect real change and augment distribution opportunities for independent filmmakers.

Paul Espinosa is an award-winning Filmmaker and Producer and currently a Professor of Chicano/a Studies at Arizona State University. He has been involved with producing films and documentaries for over 25 years. In 1997, he formed Espinosa Productions, a film and video company specializing in documentaries and dramatic films focused on U.S.-Mexico border topics. Espinosa has produced, directed, written and hosted numerous programs for public televisions stations as a Senior Producer and Executive Producer. His productions have been widely reviewed in national and regional publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and NPR's "All Things Considered." Espinosa's major national production credits for PBS include: California and the American Dream, (Producer/Director/Executive Producer - 2006), a four hour series examining the dynamics of culture, community and identity in one of the most diverse regions in the world; The Border (Producer/ Writer/Executive Producer-1999), a two hour news magazine about contemporary life along the U.S.-Mexico border; Taco Shop Poets (Producer/Writer/Director-2002), a segment for Visiones: Latino Art in the U.S., a three-hour series examining all genres of Latino art; The U.S.-Mexican War: 1846-1848 (Senior Producer-1998), a four-hour, bi-national documentary series with KERA-TV in Dallas, commemorating the 150th anniversary of a war which was a pivotal event in U.S.-Mexican history; ...and the earth did not swallow him (Producer/Executive Producer-1996), a feature length American Playhouse drama funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, relating a year in the life of young Mexican American boy and his migrant farmworker family; The Hunt for Pancho Villa (Producer/Writer-1993), a documentary for The American Experience examining Villa's raid on the U.S. and the American expedition which pursued Villa in 1916; 1492 Revisited (Producer/ Director-1992), a documentary of a dramatic art exhibit providing a critical perspective on the quincentenary of Columbus' journey; also for The American Experience, Los Mineros (1991-writer), Espinosa related the story of Mexican American copper miners' 50-year struggle for justice in Arizona; and The New Tijuana (Producer/Writer-1990), a one-hour documentary portraying the dynamic economic and political changes shaping Tijuana, Mexico.

Espinosa has shared his expertise, experience and social activism at many universities and community centers across the Americas. In 2000 he was named a Regents Lecturer at the University of California at San Diego. He formerly served on the Boards of the Media Arts Center of San Diego (as President and Co-Founder) and the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers National Board (as Treasurer). Espinosa previously served as a Board Member of the California Council for the Humanities and as a member of the Documentary Jury for the Ninth Annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, Cuba.

His work was commemorated at the Paul Espinosa Border Film Festival in El Paso, the Paul Espinosa Film Festival in Albuquerque, and the Paul Espinosa Film Festival in San Diego co-sponsored by the San Diego Unified School District. He has been nominated four times for a Rockerfeller Foundation Intercultural Film/Video Fellowship in the Documentary category. He has also been recognized by Union Bank of California and KPBS with a Local Hero Award. Additionally, the California Chicano News Media Association honored Espinosa with a Lifetime Achievement Award and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists has inducted him into the NAHJ Hall of Fame.

Lyn Goldfarb is the Producer and Director of THE NEW LOS ANGELES, one of four documentaries in CALIFORNIA AND THE AMERICAN DREAM series, which she executive produced with Paul Espinosa and Jed Riffe. The Series was broadcast nationally on PBS in April 2006. The Premiere of THE NEW LOS ANGELES was co-hosted by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, City Council President Eric Garcetti and former LA First Lady Ethel Bradley. THE NEW LOS ANGELES was awarded a CINE Golden Eagle, nominated for an IMAGEN Award for Best Documentary and nominated for Best Documentary at the San Fernando Valley International Film Festival. THE NEW LOS ANGELES was featured at: Nosotros American Latino Film Festival, Pan African Film Festival, Big Muddy Film Festival, San Fernando Valley International Film Festival, Other Venice Film Festival, Miami Women's International Film Festival and the San Diego Latino Film Festival.

Goldfarb is the Producer of HOLY IMAGE, HALLOWED GROUND: ICONS FROM SINAI, produced for the J. Paul Getty Museum to accompany the ICONS FROM SINAI exhibit. Lyn Goldfarb is Executive Producer, Producer, Director (with Deborah Ann DeSnoo) and Writer (with Joan Owens Meyerson and Deborah Ann DeSnoo) of the three hour series JAPAN: MEMOIRS OF A SECRET EMPIRE, produced with Devillier Donegan Enterprises (DDE) and PBS as part of the EMPIRES documentary series. She is Executive Producer, Director and Producer (with Margaret Koval) of the four hour THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE FIRST CENTURY, also part of DDE and PBS's EMPIRES documentary series. She was awarded an AFI Enhanced Television Workshop fellowship for THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE FIRST CENTURY.

An award-winning documentary filmmaker specializing in history and social issue documentaries, she began her career as Producer and Historian for the Academy Award nominated documentary "With Babies and Banners" (with Lorraine Gray and Anne Bohlen), which was showcased on television and in festivals worldwide. Her television credits include: Director/Producer/Writer for "Total War" for THE GREAT WAR series (KCET/PBS and BBC), "We Have a Plan" for THE GREAT DEPRESSION series (Executive Producer Henry Hampton, Blackside Inc. for PBS), and "Ways to Move" and "Without Barriers or Borders" for PEOPLE IN MOTION series (WNET/PBS). She was Senior Producer on DANGER: KIDS AT WORK (Executive Producers: Pat Mitchell and Coby Atlas for Lifetime Television); SEARCHING FOR SAN DIEGO: SAN YSIDRO (KPBS); and DISABLED AND THE COST OF SAYING I DO (KCET). She produced A TASTE OF FREEDOM for Roland Joffe, directed by Marina Goldovskaya, and broadcast on TNT. This was one of several of Goldfarb's Russian projects.

Goldfarb was the Executive Producer for BUSINESS COMMUNICATION: TOOLS FOR LEADERSHIP, a 12 hour distance learning course for Quisoc, and broadcast on PBS. She was selected to be a fellow in AFI's Directing Workshop for Women, where she directed and produced FROM THE HEART. She was an adjunct Professor at USC, and a mentor at Otis College of the Arts.

Her awards include: Academy Award nomination, 2 Emmy Awards, 2 duPont-Columbia Awards, Peabody, Producers Guild of America Kodak Vision Award, IDA Distinguished Documentary Award, a Golden Mike and awards from the American Film Festival, Mannheim International Film Festival, Festival du Cinema Portugal, London International Film Festival and Nyon International Film Festival.

Goldfarb served three terms on the IDA Board of Directors and is a member of the DGA and WGA/w.