Staff
Katy Chevigny
Executive Director
Katy Chevigny, Executive Director of Arts Engine, is a documentary filmmaker, entrepreneur and nonprofit manager. For fifteen years, Chevigny has advocated for a diverse media culture, one that illuminates important stories and amplifies voices not often heard in the mainstream media. Chevigny founded Arts Engine and its predecessor Big Mouth Productions. In 2000, Chevigny launched MediaRights.org, a “knowledge commons” for filmmakers, activists, educators, and the general public. The site was awarded the South by Southwest Interactive Media Festival’s “Best Green/Nonprofit Business Website” in 2005. MediaRights.org currently hosts information on over 7,000 films and is home to nearly 20,000 members from around the world. The Media That Matters Film Festival is now in its eighth successful year, drawing attention to the most important issues of our day. More than a festival, Media That Matters reached over two million viewers in 2008. As a film director, Chevigny recently directed the film Election Day (2007), which premiered at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in March 2007 and was broadcast on public television by POV on July 1, 2008. Chevigny also co-directed Deadline (2004), an Emmy-nominated documentary about the dramatic events that took place in Illinois in 2003 concerning capital punishment. The film aired on NBC in July 2004 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, won a CINE Golden Eagle Grand Jury Award and the Thurgood Marshall Journalism Award. Chevigny has produced many award-winning documentaries at Arts Engine, including: Arctic Son, Journey to the West: Chinese Medicine Today, Nuyorican Dream, Innocent Until Proven Guilty and Outside Looking In: Transracial Adoption in America.
Enrico Cullen
Director of Development and External Affairs
Enrico Cullen joined Arts Engine in 2005 to spearhead business development, income initiatives for documentary production and social-issue media programs, and brand articulation. Focusing on sustainability in the nonprofit media sector, Enrico secures funding from a broad spectrum of philanthropies, corporations, municipal sources and family foundations, including: Cinereach, Surdna Foundation, Adobe, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Seventh Generation, Netflix, Bay and Paul Foundations, Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and more. Under Enrico's development leadership, Arts Engine continues to refine and expand on its reputation as one of the nation's leading independent media organizations focusing on social issues. Before joining Arts Engine, Enrico was the Director of Development & Public Affairs for the Center for the Urban Environment, a $2.5 million nonprofit providing environmental education programs to over 100,000 New York City children, youth and adults each year. He led the planning team and the launch of the Academy of Urban Planning, a New Visions public school located in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and was a principal for the preliminary planning and strategy stages of the organization's LEED-certified headquarters. Enrico holds degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has held faculty appointments at the University of St. Petersburg in Russia and Richard Daly City College in Chicago.
Kibra Yohannes
Director of Operations
Prior to her position as Director of Operations for Arts Engine, Kibra was Director of Programs, working most closely with MediaRights.org, the Media That Matters Film Festival, and the Youth Media Distribution Initiative. Before joining Arts Engine in 2002, she worked in theater production as Company Manager for Freedom Repertory Theater in Philadelphia, a member of the League of Resident Theatres. She also established the first digital archive for the oldest African American newspaper in the United States, The Philadelphia Tribune, and its 120 year-old photo library. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Virginia. She recently served on the Advisory Board of Full Circle Productions, a Hip Hop theater company and as a mentor for Project Involve, an Independent Feature Project (IFP) mentorship program for filmmakers of color.
Angela Tucker
Director of Production
Angela Tucker has worked at Big Mouth Films for the past seven years and is currently the Director of Production. She is directing the film Asexuality: The Making of a Movement and producing the films, Rose and Nangabire and Dreaming Nicaragua. She was the Associate Producer, Sound Recordist and Outreach Director for the Emmy nominated film, Deadline (NBC, Dateline). She was a Consulting Producer and Field Producer for Election Day (POV, PBS) and a Line Producer for Beyond the Steps: The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (PBS' Great Performances). She directs and produces educational videos for non-profit organizations such as ACORN Housing and GLSEN in addition to producing spots for broadcasters such as Nickelodeon. She directed two shorts for The National Black Programming Consortium and ITVS’ Initiative, The Masculinity Project, entitled Invisible Men. She received an MFA in Film from Columbia University where she was awarded a grant from The Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Dean's Fellowship and a Milos Forman Finishing Fund Award. Angela received her B.A. with Honors from Wesleyan University in Theater and African-American Studies. She is a member of New York Women in Film and Television.
David Wright
Director of Technology and Online Programs
With an extensive background in Information Technology and Film Production, David has produced and co-directed projects like Creating Karma and Maya's Soul. Prior to joining Arts Engine, David spent two and a half years working in developing countries like India, China, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Uganda, Nigeria and Syria on the world's only Flying Eye Hospital, an organization dedicated to eliminating avoidable blindness. David's professional background includes seven years as an IT manager, web developer and database engineer in both the non-profit and for profit sectors.
Maia L. Ermita
Director of Festival and Outreach
Prior to joining Arts Engine, Maia served as the Educational Media Specialist for MHz Networks - one of the few independent television networks in the Washington DC area. She has always been involved with media policy and new media production both in New York and Washington through groups such as NYCTV, Media Access Project and Thirteen/WNET. Maia graduated from the George Washington University with a degree in Electronic Media and a minor in Fine Arts & Art History.
Elizabeth Mandel
Producer
Elizabeth is the producer of the film Arctic Son, and a co-producer on Jennifer Fox's film Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman. She directs and produces educational videos for non-profit organizations such as Jewish Women International and for Johns Hopkins Medical Center's Project Restore, in additional to producing spots for Nickelodeon and Sundance Channel. Elizabeth served as an associate producer for Jasmine Dellal's When the Road Bends and was the producer of the Deadline DVD. Prior to joining Big Mouth in 2001, she worked for the United Nations and the Asia Foundation. She has also worked in India, Cambodia, Nepal and Japan on a variety of community development, leadership training and citizen participation projects. She holds a Master's Degree from Columbia University in International Affairs, with a focus on Economic and Political Development and graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University with a B.A. in Religion and East Asian Cultures.
Beth Davenport
Producer
Having worked in various capacities at Big Mouth since 2003, Beth brings over eight years of production and outreach experience in television, commercials and award-winning documentaries for P.O.V., Sundance Channel, BBC and Arte France as well as directing advocacy videos and short films. Film credits include: the Emmy-nominated film Deadline, Thomas Balmes' Wrongful Death and Election Day. Beth is currently a producer at Arts Engine, Inc./Big Mouth Films and is producing The Dishes, directed by Katy Chevigny and directing Rose and Nangabire, a feature-length documentary work-in-progress.
Jolene Pinder
Associate Producer
Jolene is currently a co-producer on the Arts Engine work-in-progress Asexuality: The Making of a Movement. She was Associate Producer for Outreach and Distribution on Arts Engine's latest releases, Arctic Son and Election Day. She has also served as the DVD Producer for five Arts Engine/Big Mouth films. Jolene's personal film Bismillah was a finalist for the International Documentary Association's David Wolper Award, won first place in the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' College Television Awards (Student Emmys) and was the recipient of a CINE Golden Eagle Award. Jolene has a background in marketing, sponsorship and graphic design in a variety of non-profit settings--consumer rights, education reform, and most recently, public broadcasting. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in English Literature from the University of Chicago and a Masters in Journalism and Communications from the University of Florida's Documentary Institute.
Kasmore Rhedrick
Web Editor
Kasmore is fascinated by the many different ways the global community creates, manages, structures and distributes content to communicate with the world. He began his exploration of mass communication in the green monochrome monitor, dot matrix printer era where he filed daily "column inches" as a beat reporter for the community page of the Asbury Park Press. Kasmore is never bored by the latest developments in communication technology and loves participating in the pursuit to bring something new and cool to the world wide web. Pursuing this interest has taken him to many different countries and "virtual spaces" where he has worked as an online editor, information architect, playwright and dramaturge. A recent opportunity sent him to Qatar where he discovered a passion for Kabaddi and Sepatakraw. Although Kasmore has always been curious about new media and new structures in narrative composition, his first love will always be the traditional well-crafted story complete with local color and subtle drama.
Leah Sapin
Festival & Outreach Manager
Leah Sapin has freelanced in independent film & television production and post-production in NYC, London and Manchester (UK) and has worked for companies such as BBC Television, Radical Media, and Guns For Hire Productions on television documentary projects and feature length narratives including Welcome To Tehran, Iconoclasts, NOVACAINE and POP LIFE. Leah was also recently Associate Producer for two one-hour documentaries for Al Jazeera English and is currently the Producer for a works-in-progress feature documentary called PRETTY OLD with Boss Films. Leah is the Festival & Outreach Manager for the Media That Matters Film Festival at Arts Engine where she works with international outreach and distribution for the festival films and manages partnerships with organizations such as Tribeca Film Institute, Creative Commons, Miro, GOOD Magazine and HBO's Reel Works Teen Filmmaking.
Austra Zubkovs
Technology and Online Programs Associate
Austra came to Arts Engine in 2007 after graduating from Ithaca College, where she studied video production, international media, and anthropology. In an effort to blend her passion for independent media with her dedication to social rights activism, she has worked in various capacities with the Media That Matters Film Festival and the Technology and Online Programs department. In her free time, Austra enjoys painting, numerous types of dancing, and being very Latvian.
Felix Endara
Filmmaker Services Coordinator
Ecuadorian-born Felix Endara is a filmmaker and independent programmer living in New York City. His films have screened at festivals including Berlinale and the Mill Valley International Film Festival. Before joining Arts Engine, he was a media educator at Global Action Project, co-facilitating a program for immigrant and refugee youth. Currently, he manages Arts Engine's fiscal sponsorship program and the newly acquired DocuClub.
Philip Lane
Associate of Development & External Affairs
Before joining Arts Engine, Phil worked in the San Francisco Bay Area for a variety of start-ups and independent media organizations. From 2003 through 2007, he served as Operations Manager for the nationally renowned Ninth Street Independent Film Center. As a mediamaker, his first feature length documentary, WORKING TITLE, screened at the San Francisco MOMA, Mill Valley Film Festival, and Montclair Art Museum (NJ) in 2006. The film is now being distributed to colleges and universities around the country. Phil has a degree in Film and Television from Boston University and an MBA from San Francisco State University.
Ryann Scypion
Office Manager
Originally from Houston, Texas, Ryann moved to New York to attend NYU. She has been working in business administration since graduation and has held various administrative positions from personal assistant to office manager.