Once more, with feeling…

Filmmaker

Thomas Allen Harris

Thomas Allen Harris is a filmmaker and artist whose work across film, video, photography, and performance illuminates the human condition and the search for identity, family, and spirituality. Graduate of Harvard College and the Whitney Independent Study Program, member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and published writer/curator, Harris lectures widely on the use of media as a tool for social change. He lectures and teaches on media arts, visual literacy, and personal archiving at such institutions as Yale, Dartmouth, University of California, and many others.

His deeply personal films – VINTAGE- Families of Value (1995), É Minha Cara/That’s My Face (2001), and The Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela (2005), have received critical acclaim at international film festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, FESPACO, Outfest, Flaherty, and Cape Town. His most recent feature film, Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People (2014), which looks at the ways photographic representations serve as tools of representation and self-representation through history, was nominated for both an Emmy and Peabody, and won over 7 international awards including the 2015 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary Film. His latest short film, About Face: The Evolution of a Black Producer (2017) had its premiere on World AIDS Day at the Whitney Museum of American Art and over 100 institutions worldwide as part of Visual AIDS’ 28th annual Day With(out) Art.

In 2009, Harris founded Digital Diaspora Family Reunion, LLC (DDFR) a social engaged transmedia project that has incorporated community organizing, performance, virtual gathering spaces, and storytelling into over 45 unique audio-visual events in over 30 cities. With this project, Harris has toured nationally and internationally, most recently as a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College and at the Yale University Afro American Cultural Center, to invite individuals to explore and share the rich and revealing narratives found within their family photo albums. To date, DDFR has brought over 3000 people together in live events and gathered in excess of 30,000 images, sharing content through social media, television, articles, newspapers, and radio to receive over 70 million impressions worldwide. Harris is bringing DDFR to national TV with Family Pictures USA.

His work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, The Fledgling Fund, Rockefeller Foundation, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, Creative Time Inc., and the Banff Centre.

Researcher

Laura Ligouri

Laura Ligouri is the Executive Director and Founder of Mindbridge, a not-for-profit organization connecting psychological and neurobiological insight to non-profit and government sponsored humanitarian efforts. Mindbridge’s Services include research where interdisciplinary methods and procedures are used to design, collect and analyze data answering questions of central importance to human rights organizations and civil society spaces; assessment where psychological and neurobiological tools are used to help evaluate program performance and impact; and education where the latest science is made accessible through workshops, seminars and publications, translating research into meaningful impacts in peoples’ lives. Laura’s interest in the intersection of neuroscience and human rights emerged as a coordinator and researcher at the Saxelab Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at MIT, where neurobiological research often sought to understand the biological underpinnings of implicit bias, inter-ethnic social conflict, violence and conversely collective empowerment and change. Laura’s work on inter-ethnic social conflict sought to elucidate the bidirectional, mutual constitution of culture and neurobiological processes that give rise to bias, discrimination and violence. To date Laura has written numerous scientific publications and has conducted research in conjunction with the DRAPER Institute, the McGovern Institute, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), OSCE Office of Democratic Initiatives and Human Rights, the Alliance of Civilizations Media Fund, among others. Today, Laura is a lecturer in the Psychology and Honors Programs at the University of Southern Maine. For more information on Mindbridge please visit us at www.mindbridgecenter.org.

Comedian and Activist

Lizz Winstead

Lizz Winstead has built her amazing career hilariously responding to the world. As co-creator and head writer of ​Comedy Central’s​ “The Daily Show,” Winstead has forever changed the way people get their news. As co-founder of Air America Radio, she hosted her own show called  “Unfiltered”, sharing the mic every morning with the amazing Rachel Maddow and Hip Hop legend, Chuck D. As a stand-up she continues to tour, bringing her rapid response brand of comedy to theatres across the country and in 2014, was initiated into the Harvard Lampoon.  

Winstead has now taken her satirical brilliance one step further, combining it with her passion for reproductive rights to form her latest passion project, ​Abortion Access Front​, a non profit organization made up of comedians, writers and producers who create videos that use humor and outrage to expose sexist, anti choice politicians in all 50 state legislatures. AAF also spends 4 months out of the year doing shows across the country and providing support to independent abortion providers and local activists helping them to remove the stigma around abortion.  

In addition to performing and her activism, Winstead authored ​Lizz Free Or Die,​ a funny and touching book of personal essays, that ​Elle​ magazine called, ​“Sharply witty and iconoclastic” 

Winstead’s talents as a comedian and media visionary have been recognized by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Entertainment Weekly’s 100 Most Creative People issue among other print media. Winstead continues to appear on ​Comedy Central, HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher​ and NPR, as well as her regular commentary on ​MSNBC. 

Winstead has a lot to say about politics and current events, and when she says it, it is always insightful and hilarious! 

Strategist

Hans Park

Hans Park is the Strategic Design and Research Manager at the UN Refugee Agency’s Innovation Service. His work is concerned with leading creative direction activities within the team and supporting management of a range of innovation projects, primarily related to Artificial Intelligence, strategic communications, inclusion and diversity

Erica Ciszek

Erica Ciszek is an Assistant Professor at the School of Advertising & Public Relations at The University of Texas at Austin. Their research explores the intersections of strategic communication, activism and social change to challenge the field to think more complexly about the relationship between power and resistance. They engage in theoretically and empirically rigorous work, engaging dialogically with hard-to-reach populations and hard-to-study groups, groups that are marginalized and vulnerable and difficult to represent. Ciszek’s research has been published in the top journals in the communication, including the New Media & Society, Journal of Communication, Social Media & Society, as well as advocacy journals such as the Journal of Public Interest Communication and Journal of Homosexuality.

Educator and Author

Davin Phoenix

Davin Phoenix is a teacher and scholar of race, emotion and political behavior. A first generation college graduate, Davin researches how race interacts with various spheres of U.S. politics to shape the attitudes, emotions and behavior of both everyday people and elites. Past and current work explores how race influences the emergence of anger, pride and hope in response to politics, how protests and media narratives on policing have influenced state legislative activity post-Ferguson, and how religious views shape the policy preferences and political behavior of people of color. His research has appeared in Politics, Groups and Identities, The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and The National Political Science Review. Additionally, his perspective on the intersections of race, emotion and politics have been featured in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and National Public Radio.

Davin’s book, entitled The Anger Gap: How Race Shapes Emotion in Politics was published in January 2020 with Cambridge University Press. Integrating theories from psychology, political behavior and Black politics, The Anger Gap argues that both the stigmatization of Black anger in the public consciousness and the lack of collective agency felt by African Americans make anger over politics less prevalent and politically potent for Black Americans than White Americans. To test that argument, the book utilizes original experiments, forty years of survey data, and emotion discourse analysis of rhetoric from political elites across the ideological spectrum. The book makes a critical distinction in how emotions translate to behavior across racial groups.

Since 2016, Davin has served as Co-Director of the First Generation First Quarter Challenge, a peer mentorship program providing scaffolding and support to first year social science students seeking to become the first in their families to graduate from a four-year university. Davin is a recipient of multiple recognitions for his teaching and mentoring, including the 2017-18 Dean’s Honoree for Teaching Excellence Award, the Distinguished Lecturer Award from the Black Leadership and Advancement Coalition, and a 2019 UROP Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate Research.

Scholar

Debbie Almontaser

Dr. Debbie Almontaser is an internationally recognized, award-winning educator, speaker and authority on cross cultural understanding. She is an influential community leader and the Founder and CEO of Bridging Cultures Group, Inc.

Dr. Almontaser was the founding and former principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn, NY. A twenty-five year veteran of the NYC Public School System, she taught special education, inclusion, trained teachers in literacy, and served as a multicultural specialist and diversity advisor. Currently, she is the Board President of the Muslim Community Network (www.mcnny.org). She frequently lectures, serves on panels, and facilitates teacher and public workshops on cultural diversity, conflict resolution, Arab Culture, Islam, Muslims in America, interfaith coalition building and youth leadership at schools, universities, libraries, museums, faith-based organizations, churches, synagogues, as well as national and international conferences.

Photographer and Activist

Aundre Larrow

Aundre is a Florida native, Brooklyn-based portrait photographer who has spent the last few years shooting editorial and lifestyle content for his clients. He most recently shot the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with The North Face, NY Fashion week and a portrait project about Amendment 4 in Florida. Throughout the years, he has always pursued the truth that can be found in portraiture and his current work is the next chapter of that.