Arts Engine Welcomes Steve Mendelsohn as New Executive Director

After a competitive process and thorough search, the Board of Directors of Arts Engine has chosen Steve Mendelsohn as its new Executive Director. Mendelsohn will succeed Katy Chevigny who will move into a new role as Co-Founder & Senior Director. 

Eliza Byard, Arts Engine Board Chair, said, “Steve comes to Arts Engine with a wealth of diverse experience. We all look forward to working closely with him to move Arts Engine forward. His extensive knowledge of the media arts field, locally, nationally and internationally, will be a great asset for Arts Engine’s mission as the organization continues to drive change by connecting media, technology and community.”

Prior to joining Arts Engine, Steve was the Executive Director of FilmAid International, which helps refugees create films and videos on vital issues including health, human rights, protection of women and girls, repatriation information, and more. The films are screened for the communities in large outdoor nighttime events and in smaller focused workshops during the day. Before FilmAid International, Steve was the Executive Director of Project Rebirth, a nonprofit organization based in downtown Manhattan, whose mission is to document the entire reconstruction of the World Trade Center site through a feature-length documentary film and an installation in the Memorial Museum at Ground Zero. From 2002 to 2005, Steve was the Executive Director of Manhattan Neighborhood Network, the nation’s largest nonprofit public access cable television network. Prior to that, Steve was a General Manager at Razorfish, an Internet design and consulting company, and he also worked at Nurun, a French Canadian Internet consulting firm. Steve also worked for a decade with American Express in a variety of marketing roles. He received his MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

About the new role for Chevigny, Byard said, “We are extremely lucky to have Katy remain in a senior management role at Arts Engine. Katy’s new role will enable her to continue as a champion of our mission and also devote more time to filmmaking.”

Over the past decade, Arts Engine has grown from a small documentary production company to an innovative and dynamic social-issue media organization. Eight feature-length documentaries by Arts Engine’s production arm, Big Mouth, have been created since 1997, winning prestigious awards, gaining national recognition, and, as was the case with the Emmy-nominated film Deadline, reaching audiences in the millions. Arctic Son and Election Day, our most recent Big Mouth films, were broadcast by P.O.V., public television’s premiere showcase for independent, non-fiction film. MediaRights.org now has over 20,000 members worldwide, more than 7,000 films in an online database searchable by issue, and reaches hundreds of thousands of people every year. Media That Matters, one of the internet’s earliest online video sites, has a nine-year legacy celebrating short-form, social-issue media. And the adoption of DocuClub, a recent Arts Engine addition, continues a fifteen-year mainstay for the New York City documentary community.