Victoria Cummings
Victoria Hamburg Cummings (Producer) works in on-line, print and broadcast media to create compelling stories. She produced the first AIDS benefit in 1985, called "Comic Relief", with Mike Nichols, Lorne Michaels, Steve Martin and other far-sighted, caring celebrities, raising a million dollars for research grants at a time when there was little government funding for AIDS/HIV programs. With artist Robert Longo and science fiction writer William Gibson, she created the feature film "Johnny Mnemonic” starring Keanu Reeves for Sony/TriStar. She has produced 5 music videos for the band REM. She was a founding member and former president of New York Women in Film and Television. In television, for over 30 years, she has produced programs for the National Geographic Channel, Discovery, HBO, Showtime and all three major networks. Victoria is deeply committed to human interconnectedness and Mother Earth. She is presently working on a project with a group of Native American Grandmothers as a water protector.
Susan Lazarus
Susan Lazarus is a Producer and Post-Production Supervisor whose career in feature films includes working with the filmmakers Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, Maggie Greenwald, and Mira Nair. Documentary films include: HBO’s The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, Naqoyqatsi, Love, Marilyn, Image Before My Eyes, The War at Home, and Apache 8, about an all-woman team of firefighters in Arizona.
Nicole Betancourt
Nicole Betancourt (Director) was the Producer, Director and Videographer for Before You Go (HBO documentary that won an Emmy and a Golden Spire at the San Francisco International Film Festival) about her father who died of AIDS in 1993. She was Producer and Videographer for 90 MILES (POV/PBS), which won Best Documentary at both New York Latino International Film Festival and at Festival de Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano in Cuba. She created Changing Course about Hurricane Mitch and farming in Central America and two salsa music videos with Jose Conde to motivate Latinos to vote. Nicole was granted a Food and Community Fellowship (funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation) to create the Parent Earth video series (70 shorts) that educate parents about healthy food. She produced short video series for Efran Films including Influencers and Innovation, an eighteen-part series for Huffington Post, and ALIVE, an award-winning six-part series for The Weather Channel. Her video art work includes Milk-n-Honey, a multimedia play at 3LD in New York City about food, and a multi-media performance piece and installation about water in Oaxaca, Mexico. She worked from 1999 to 2005 as the Creative Director and then Executive Director of MediaRights, a nonprofit organization dedicated to media for social change. While at MediaRights, she launched its online community and built up the award-wining Media That Matters Film Festival. She is a Sustainability Leaders Network Fellow and believes that stories that increase our empathy and sense of interconnectivity are powerful forces for peace and the preservation our natural world.