Julie Cohen

Julie Cohen is the director and producer of the Emmy Award winning, Academy Award nominated 2018 documentary RBG, along with Betsy West. Previous films she’s directed include The Sturgeon Queens which screened at the 2015 Berlinale and 80+ other festivals, winning 10 Audience Choice awards, and Ndiphilela Ukucula: I Live to Sing, which won the 2014 New York Emmy Award for Best Arts Program.  Before she started making documentaries, Julie was a long time staff producer for NBC News. Julie holds a B.A. from Colgate and master’s degrees from Columbia Journalism School and Yale Law School.

Rob Eshman

Rob Eshman is the National Editor of the Forward and former Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of the Jewish Journal.  He is working on the book Foodaism and projects for TV and film.  Under his leadership, both the Jewish Journal and Rob won numerous local and national awards for writing, design and community leadership. In 2018 Rob received First Place from the Los Angeles Press Club for Feature Writing, and in 2019 he received a Rockower Awards for food journalism. Rob is a contributor to the Los Angeles Times Opinion pages and a frequent guest commentator on Los Angeles-area media. He  teaches “Media, Food and Culture” at USC Annenberg School of Journalism and has been guest lecturer at University of Missouri Journalism School and Brandeis University.

Ben Gundersheimer

Lollapalooza and Central Park Summerstage to climate action rallies on Capitol Hill. He is the recipient of the first songwriting scholarship awarded by Berklee College and five Parents’ Choice Gold Awards. His spirited bilingual performances aim to help children see each other across borders and foster cross-cultural connections. Recipient of the first songwriting scholarship awarded by Berklee College and five Parents’ Choice Gold Awards, Ben received his B.A. from Amherst College and an M.Ed from Smith College. PJ Library has commissioned two albums of original music from Ben (The Mitzvah Bus and Seeds of Shalom), which have been distributed to tens of thousands of families around the world. His music has been critically acclaimed by the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and People magazine. Ben’s bilingual picture books Señorita Mariposa and Lilah Tov, published by Penguin Random House, are adapted from his original songs and address themes of ecology and immigration.

Jennifer Kessler

Jennifer Kessler is Executive Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble, a musician’s collective that develops and performs the works of living composers. Before that, Jennifer served as Executive Director of Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, a music and social justice nonprofit that empowers girls and gender expansive youth. She has also served as the Director of Community and Education for Orchestra of St. Luke’s in NYC, and at Carnegie Hall, Jennifer managed young musician training programs with world-renowned artists. Consulting projects include developing partnerships, producing festivals, designing education initiatives, and fundraising for the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation, and the Inner City Youth Orchestra of LA. Jennifer has raised millions of dollars for arts and justice organizations, and has also overseen the Getty Education and Community Investment Grants through the League of American Orchestras as well as participated on multiple peer-review grant panels. Jennifer holds degrees in French horn performance from Northwestern University in Illinois and Hanns Eisler Musikhochschule in Berlin, Germany.

Gillian Laub

Gillian Laub is a photographer and filmmaker based in New York. Laub has spent the past two decades investigating political conflicts, exploring complex family and community relationships, and challenging assumptions about cultural identity. Laub’s first monograph, Testimony (Aperture), began as a response to the second intifada in the Middle East. Laub spent over a decade exploring issues of racism in the American South. This work became Laub’s first feature length, directed and produced, documentary film, Southern Rites, that premiered on HBO.  Her monograph, Southern Rites (Damiani) and traveling exhibition are used as a teaching tool in schools and institutions across the country.

Caroline Libresco

Caroline Libresco is a leading film festival curator, producer, and program strategist with 26 years of experience as an arbiter in the independent film sector. From 2001-2019, she was Senior Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival. She was also Founding Director of Sundance Institute’s Catalyst Program and Women’s Initiative, and Co-Founder of Sundance’s Creative Producing Program. Previously, she was an executive at ITVS, SF International Film Festival, and SF Jewish Film Festival. Among her projects as creative producer are Fanci’s Persuasion, starring Justin Vivian Bond; Tribeca FF Jury Prize-winner, Sunset Story; and Peabody Award-winner American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs. Caroline is Senior Advisor to the Thessaloniki Film Festival and an active executive producer through her company, Gabbert-Libresco Projects. She serves on the board of IDA (International Documentary Association), is a member of AMPAS, and appears widely on film juries and panels internationally. She holds an M.A. in History of Religion from Harvard University and an M.F.A. from UCLA Film School.

Mary Melton

Mary Melton is an award-winning writer and editor based in Los Angeles. The former editor-in-chief of Los Angeles magazine, she serves as Editorial Director at the design-strategy firm Godfrey Dadich Partners, where she has spearheaded the redesign of National Geographic, helped companies like Nike, Lyft, and IBM create editorial strategies and tell journalistic stories, and oversaw the launch of Majordomo Media, GDP’s partnership with chef David Chang. She also serves as Editor-at-Large for Alta Magazine. During her longtime tenure at Los Angeles, she garnered 12 National Magazine Award nominations and three wins (the first in the magazine’s 50-year history). She also served as VP/editorial director for the company’s publishing group, overseeing the editorial direction, redesigns, and digital relaunches of Texas Monthly, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Orange Coast magazines. Her interests include theater (a third-generation graduate of Hollywood High School, she has most recently performed on four tours with Pop-Up Magazine), architecture (she won the PEN Center USA Literary Journalism Award for her profile of photographer Julius Shulman), and the culinary arts (Los Angeles won three James Beard Foundation Awards for its food and wine reporting).

Patrick Moore

Patrick Moore, is Director at The Warhol. Patrick is a museum leader focused on inclusion, digital sophistication and relevancy for The Warhol and for the field.  Patrick joined The Warhol in 2011 as Director of Development before becoming Deputy Director and Managing Director. His trajectory at The Warhol has included a focus on developing new partnerships for the museum, both curatorial and revenue-based, with a special focus on the museum’s moving image collection. Earlier in his career, Patrick worked as a digital producer for Yahoo!.  He was also the Founding Director of The Estate Project for Artists with AIDS (a project of The Alliance for the Arts, New York). Patrick has produced editions and special projects with a range of important contemporary artists including Ed Ruscha, Catherine Opie, Cindy Sherman, David Hockney, and others.

Jenny Steingart

Jenny Steingart produces film, television and live events. Her most recent Broadway and off-Broadway productions include FLS (Freestyle Love Supreme) on Broadway with Lin-Manuel Miranda, Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish directed by Joel Grey, Tina Fey’s Mean Girls and Natasha, and Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 starring Josh Groban. She is a partner in FLS Academy, a music, improvisation and rap school; produced the cult film Black Dynamite; and is the co-founding partner of the Japanese animation studio Ultra Super Pictures. Jenny is also the co-founder of Ars Nova, New York City’s premier theater for emerging artists and new work.  For 17 years, Ars Nova has fostered the careers of such artists as Beau Willamon, Liz Meriwether, Billy Eichner, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Alex Timbers, Annie Baker and many more. She is a proud member of Reboot and, back in the day, co-founded the website jewcy.com.