John Beder (he/him) is an Emmy-nominated Asian American documentary director specializing in community-centered storytelling on social justice, public health, and climate change. A member of the Asian American Documentary Network, Documentary Producers Alliance, and The Video Consortium, he also serves on the ArtsBuild Board, is a 2023 Tennessee Arts Commission Fellow, and has been a mentor with Kartemquin and the Southern Documentary Fund. As co-founder of Bedrock Productions, he has directed four films, including Dying in Your Mother’s Arms, which earned an News & Doc Emmy® nomination. His recent documentary, How to Sue the Klan, qualified for the 2025 Academy Awards® and has been selected at 11 Oscar-qualifying festivals.

Max Asaf is a Chicago-based, award-winning freelance documentary filmmaker. From 2016-2019, Max worked at Kartemquin Films, helping raise over $5 million for the organization and its documentaries. Max produced the 2024 IDA shortlisted documentary short Bad Hostage which reveals the pernicious origins of Stockholm Syndrome. Bad Hostage premiered at the 2024 Sheffield DocFest and won a special jury award at the BendFilm Festival. Max is the co-producer of The Last Strike, an upcoming feature documentary from Kindling Group on the 1981 PATCO strike, and was the producer of The Last Drop, a short sci-fi fiction film exploring the overlooked signs of relationship abuse. Max is also in early post-production on his feature directorial debut, Within the Box, a personal documentary about the memories, stories, and familial identity contained and lost in a box of photos smuggled out of Poland eight decades ago.

Alexandra Korba is a seasoned freelance creative producer and line producer. Most recently she was lead producer on the 4-part HBO/Max series "The Synanon Fix" which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Prior to that, she worked on the independent feature "Adrift", which premiered at Mill Valley Film Festival and Netflix's "Downfall: The Case Against Boeing" which also premiered at Sundance. Currently, she is working across two Netflix documentary features, one of which is a follow-up to "Downfall".

Her work across documentary features and series at production company Moxie Films, in tandem with her experiences working at Paramount Pictures and National Geographic, gives her a unique breadth of knowledge across the industry. She has granular insight into every aspect of documentary filmmaking from development to post-production.

With an eye for beauty & a lust for meaning, Samantha Grant is an award-winning filmmaker, artist, journalist, and educator who harnesses the power of potent storytelling to inspire change on a broad scale by moving people, emotionally and intellectually, into new ways of thinking. By presenting beautifully crafted stories in collaboration with an international network of students Sam herself trained in 15 years of teaching at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism & Stanford’s Knight Fellowship, Sam’s work reaches millions worldwide, addressing topics like media ethics, global public health, religious cults, politics, education, and human rights, all from a female perspective. Sam’s work has been featured on PBS, ABC, CNN, NPR, MTV, Variety, A&E, History Channel, FRONTLINE, and more. Most recently, Sam co-founded Moving People Media, a storytelling nonprofit committed to inspiring people to see the humanity in one another through bold, beautiful storytelling, and to behave accordingly.

Stephanie Jenkins has been making historical documentaries for fifteen years, primarily as an archival producer and producer with Ken Burns. She is a Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Archival Producers Alliance, and is working to put a framework in place around generative AI use in documentaries.

Jess Epstein is an independent documentary producer who has been working in documentary film and unscripted television for over 10 years. She has worked in the U.S. and abroad, producing both long and short-format content, including feature-length documentaries, LOS ÚLTIMOS FRIKIS and CANDACE PARKER: UNAPOLOGETIC (ESPN / FILM-45), both of which premiered at DOC NYC. Her most recent project, REMAINING NATIVE, directed by Paige Bethmann, which premiered at SXSW in 2025 and received both the Special Jury and Audience awards. She is currently producing the feature documentary, DADDY, directed by Hannah Myers. She is a PGA Create Documentary Fellow, CNN Points North American Stories Documentary Fellow, and a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program Grantee for this project. She is also an impact strategist, recently working with Loren Waters on her short documentary film, ᏗᏂᏠᎯ ᎤᏪᏯ (MEET ME AT THE CREEK) (BSDFF 2024) and TIGER (Sundance 2024). She holds a BA from NYU Gallatin and MA from BARUCH Cuny. In addition to producing, Jessica is the Associate Director of Strategic Partnerships at BAVC Media.