Heather got her start as Web Producer for Discovery, TLC, and the Science Channel. Her first feature-length documentary, “If These Knishes Could Talk: The Story of the New York Accent,” was featured in “The New Yorker,” “The New York Times,” the BBC, WSJ, NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and “The Brian Lehrer Show.” It screened in film festivals around the country, at the Library of Congress, and streamed on Apple TV+, Amazon Prime, and Roku. ​

Heather followed with ”SPOKE: A Short Film About NYC Bikes” which screened at the Williamsburg Film Festival, and “Swagger: The Rise and Fall of the ‘86 Mets,” produced by Michael Weithorn, creator of “King of Queens.” Heather was also Location Scout for HBO. Most recently, Heather was​ Production Manager for “An American River,” which premiered at the Montclair Film Festival.​

Caroline is an educator and award-winning filmmaker whose work has appeared on PBS, Discovery, and NatGeo. She was co-producer of “Mariachi High,” a documentary that premiered on PBS' acclaimed National Summer Arts Festival series, and her first documentary was PBS’, “Nkosi: A Voice of Africa's AIDS Orphans.” As a producer for the award-winning multimedia production company Talking Eyes Media, DeVoe helped create healthcare-focused projects including “The Inner Wounds of War” for the Discovery Channel and Firestorm”, a one-hour PBS documentary that was nominated for a regional Emmy Award.​

An active community volunteer and educator, ​Caroline was Media Director for Harlem Children's Zone's after-school program, TRUCE. DeVoe received a BA in Digital Filmmaking with a Minor in Africana Studies from Ramapo College, and an MA, Technology Specialist from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Kelly Sheehan is a strategic development executive and creative producer with decades of experience making more than 80 hours of quality broadcast television and independent documentaries. Most recently she served as producer of the award-winning independent feature documentary AMERICAN RIVER (2022).

Her films have been theatrically released (FOR SEASONS LODGE, 2009), broadcast on PBS (MARIACHI HIGH, 2012), and on the Sundance Channel (FOLLOW MY VOICE WITH THE MUSIC OF HEDWIG, 2006; CROSSING ARIZONA, 2007) and have debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival and AFI’s Silverdocs Festival, earning three Grand Jury Prize nominations and multiple Best of the Festival and Audience Awards worldwide. Kelly is a member of the International Documentary Association and NY Women in Film & Television.

Lazarus Nazario is a native New York artist and self-described provocateur grappling with American history. She creates paintings and drawings in oil and mixed media that explore themes of subversion, identity and social order. She is also known for “hijacking” bus shelters throughout New York City with her social justice public art campaigns.

Lazarus’ award-winning work was exhibited at the National Academy of Design as well as the National Arts Club in NY. She also collaborated with Tandem NYC on a poster for Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal Series. 

Lazarus has taught at Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Wagner College in NY. In 2006 Nazario received an Original Work Grant from the NY State Council on the Arts & Humanities of Staten Island, where she currently lives and works. 

(Photo Credit: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times/Redux)

Ruben Sibri is a Staten Island native who graduated from the College of Staten Island and works as a Borough representative for NYS.

Previously, Ruben worked in the New York State Assembly, rising from Constituent Liaison to Chief of Staff.

Anthony is an Adjunct Professor of Film and TV at N.Y.U.'s Tisch School of the Arts, where he’s taught documentary lighting, camera, and audio production for more than 20 years. Artis is also the author of the bestselling “Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide”, “The Shut Up and Shoot Freelance Video Guide”, and a featured video instructor on LinkedIn Learning.

Crockett edited the Academy Award-nominated ”Beasts of the Southern Wild” and the critically-acclaimed ”Ghostbox Cowboy.” His work has aired on NBC, PBS, HBO, VH1, and played in movie theaters internationally.

Debbie-Ann Paige is a public historian specializing in community and local African-American history and is a professional genealogist. She is co-president and a founding member of the Richard B. Dickenson Staten Island Chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS) and an appointed member of the New York City Council task force created to examine monuments, statues, public art and historical markers on city-owned property. 

Debbie-Ann has worked on numerous local history projects including “In Pursuit of Freedom'' with the Brooklyn Historical Society and established the Louis Napoleon House as a site with the National Park Service Underground Railroad Network to Freedom on behalf of the Sandy Ground Historical Society. Most recently, Debbie-Ann was the historical consultant on the book, The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis. She has also appeared as an historical interpreter on the Emmy Award-winning show Secrets of New York and PBS programs Metrofocus: Juneteenth and Treasures of New York: Snug Harbor.

Peggy King Jorde is a Cultural Projects Consultant combining more than 30 years of experience in planning, architecture, public art, and historic preservation projects in New York City and beyond. King Jorde served under three NYC mayors, including the Honorable David N. Dinkins providing comprehensive oversight of all capital construction projects specific to New York's cultural landmarks, public art, and art museums. Her range of support spanned project planning, development, management & design.

Today, Peggy lends considerable focus to consulting for developers, working with the community and civic-based preservation efforts, and lecturing aimed at building awareness and building advocacy for cultural heritage in marginalized communities in the US and abroad. She has consulted government and community stakeholders on a development project in the British Overseas Territory of St. Helena in the South Atlantic. The project is believed to be 'the largest burial ground of enslaved Africans direct from the Middle Passage.' Peggy is a film participant and producer in the British documentary about the project, entitled "A Story of Bones," which premiered at Tribeca in 2022,

Donald Thoms is the former Vice President of Programming for PBS, overseeing the visual arts, dance, music and performance programming, as well as independent films. He is also an award-winning producer and former VP of Production and Talent Development for Discovery Communications.

Dr. Blakey is an NEH Professor of Anthropology, Africana Studies, and American Studies at the College of William & Mary. He received his PhD at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Dr. Blakey works on the interface of human biology and culture, including an examination of the social history of theories that connect biology, "nature,'' social inequality, and behavior; the articulation between human biology, racial ideology, and public policy; the political economy of health in industrial society; the bioarchaeology of the African Diaspora; and the ethics and epistemology of publicly engaged research.  Dr. Blakey also has a long-standing interest in how museum interpretations demonstrate ideology and in the development of methods in dental paleopathology. His research on the 17th and 18th-century African Burial Ground in New York City and the comparative database on the bioarchaeology of the African Diaspora are being developed at the Institute for Historical Biology which he directs.

Mary Edwards is a composer and sound artist who focuses on the vibratory, environmental, emotive, historic, and spatial properties of sound that are simultaneously intimate and immense. Themes of temporality, impermanence, nostalgia and the natural world recur throughout her work. Listening is an inherent and integral part of her process in conveying how all sounds have the potential to be habitable, and can be transformative once you get inside them. Her installations, compositions, sound walks and performances make both sublime and infinitesimal processes accessible and immersive: Exploring the ephemerality and sonic nuances of ice by dropping hydrophones and geophones into the interior of an Arctic glacier above the 78° Parallel, or recreating the subtle tectonic plate shifts and seismic activity of a sonorous mountain with her sound sculptures, or activating an architectural space with meditative breathing that emulates undulating winds and sea torrents, or exploring deep time through a storied forest, or coalescing environmental field recordings and cinematic soundscapes that play like soundtracks to miniature films.

Mary Edwards has presented at the Beyond Listening International Symposium on Sonic Ecologies/CENSE, World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE), Ecomusics & Ecomusicologies Conference at UNC, Locations and Dislocations: An Ecomusicological Conversation/Princeton, The Tybee Island Marine Science Center, and The Spitsbergen Artist Gallery/Svalbard. She has been has been awarded residencies and commissions with ACA Soundscape Field Station at Canaveral National Seashore, Headlands Center for the Arts, The Arctic Circle, Wa Na Wari, InSitu Polyculture Commons, The William T. Davis Nature Conservancy, The Beach Institute Savannah, The Grimshaw-Gudewicz Foundation, 429 Architectural Space, Condé Nast Gallery, The New York Public Library, and The Joshua Tree Cultural Preservation Center. Her work has been featured in publications, podcasts and the forthcoming documentary film, AMERICAN GRAVEYARD (2027). Mary serves on the committee for the Sonification Network for the Geosciences, is a producer at Campbient, and holds an MFA in Sound and Architecture from Goddard College.

Mary Edwards lives in New York and works internationally