Journalism Day (Nov. 14)

Dawn Porter is an American documentary filmmaker and the founder of the production company Trilogy Films. Her award-winning films include Gideon’s Army (2013), about three black public defenders working in the southern United States, Spies of Mississippi (2014), about the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (MSSC) efforts to preserve segregation during the 50s and 60s, Trapped, about the impact of anti-abortion laws on abortion providers in the South, and Bobby Kennedy for President, which debuted on Netflix.   As a two-time Sundance film festival director, Porter’s work has been featured on HBO, Netflix, CNN, PBS, MSNBC, MTV Films, and other platforms. Porter’s latest documentary, The Lady Bird Diaries, an all-archival documentary about Lady Bird Johnson debuted at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival where it won the Lone Star Prize. Her next project entitled Deadlocked:  How America Shaped the Supreme Court, a four-part docuseries, explores the history of the Supreme Court, the justices, decisions, and confirmation battles that have shaped the United States. The series will premiere on Paramount/Showtime on September 22nd.  Other current projects include directing the MGM documentary Cirque Du Soleil: Without a Net which was a centerpiece at the 2022 DOC NYC Festival and directing/executive producing a 6-part series on the continuation of the historic civil rights documentary series Eyes on the Prize for HBO. Additional credits include The Me You Can’t See (Apple TV+), Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer (National Geographic), The Way I See It (Focus Features), John Lewis: Good Trouble (CNN, Magnolia Pictures), 37 Words (ESPN), Un(re)solved (Frontline PBS), and Gideon’s Army (HBO).

Lester Holt is an award-winning journalist at NBC News. He is the anchor and managing editor of the network’s flagship broadcast “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt,” which recently won an Edward R. Murrow Award, as well as the anchor of “Dateline NBC.” Named the “most-trusted television news personality in America” by The Hollywood Reporter/Morning Consult poll, Holt became anchor of “NBC Nightly News” in June 2015 after anchoring the weekend editions of “NBC Nightly News” for eight years and co-anchoring “Weekend TODAY” for 12 years. Holt has served as principal anchor of “Dateline NBC” since September 2011 and joined NBC News in 2000.

Dan Slepian is an award winning investigative producer and a 18-year veteran of NBC’s venerable newsmagazine, Dateline — where he has developed and produced dozens of episodes, complex hidden camera investigations, and breaking news segments. Slepian’s investigations have helped solve cold cases, assisted in exonerating wrongfully convicted inmates, uncovered corruption, sparked changes in laws, and have led to the shutting down of illicit businesses. He also conceived and developed three separate recurring hour-long series: “Vegas Homicide,” “Vegas Undercover” and “Wild, Wild Web.” Most notably, Slepian is known for his in depth investigations into cases of wrongful convictions as seen in “Conviction”, “In the Shadow of Justice”, and “A Bronx Tale”.    

With more than 23 years of lived experience, incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, Jon-Adrian Velazquez has worked tirelessly to redefine the humanity of men who are or have been incarcerated. Mr. Velazquez has seized every opportunity to learn, lead, support, and give, which earned him an early release in 2021 via executive clemency—a rare andhonorable accomplishment that attests to the moral fiber of his character. He now helps programs that work with justice systems by bridging communications with departments of corrections, community partners, and incarcerated populations to achieve ambitious mutual goals in criminal justice policy and reform. His legendary partnership with Dateline NBC producer Dan Slepian to produce Conviction, a documentary about his own case, was one of the factors that led to massive public support for his petition for executive clemency.

​​Sarah Amos currently serves as the Vice President, Development & Production (Non-Fiction TV, Documentaries) at Condé Nast Entertainment. Before joining CNE, she was the VP of Development and Production for Marvel Entertainment’s New Media division, overseeing the video, live streaming and audio content slate and was an Executive Producer on the Disney+ original series Marvel’s 616 and Marvel’s Hero Project. Prior to Marvel, Amos was the Executive Producer of Live Products for ABC News Digital, leading production, strategy and planning for all live content and events including the 2016 election. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

Since launching NBC News Studios in 2020 Liz has developed and supervised a wide array of premium documentaries and series, including, most recently, Memory Box: Echoes of 9/11, which was featured at the Toronto Film Festival. In more than two decades as a journalist and storyteller, she has produced everything from breaking news to longform investigations to true crime. Liz is also the executive producer of Dateline, the longest running show in NBC primetime history and an executive producer of Studios’ first scripted project, The Thing About Pam, starring Renee Zellweger. Liz is the winner of multiple Emmy, DuPont and Peabody awards.

Just before landing at NBC News Studios, Molly O’Brien was the Executive Producer Special Projects & COO of Fork Films in New York City, and a founding producer of Sundance Institute’s Catalyst Initiative in Los Angeles. She is an Academy Award shortlisted and prime-time Emmy award-winning producer with over two decades of experience producing documentary series and feature films. She loves botanical gardens, chihuahuas, dance concerts and documentaries.

Nate Halverson is an Emmy Award-winning senior reporter and producer at The Center for Investigative Reporting, covering business and finance with an emphasis on the global food system. He has reported across the world, from Asia and Europe to Africa and the Americas, and on investigative topics ranging from financial fraud and organized crime to uncovering and reporting on internal company documents that resulted in a $155 million settlement.

Alex Holder is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and founder of AJH Films, an international filmmaking company dedicated to navigating provocative spaces through dynamic storytelling. Holder’s curiosity matched with his thoughtful eye takes audiences on a visionary and compelling journey through profound interviews with unmatched access. With each of his subjects receiving an uninterrupted stage to share their unique experiences, Holder thoughtfully seeks out controversial truths while leaving viewers with a runway to formulate their own conclusions. Holder produced and directed Unprecedented, a groundbreaking three-part docu-series which included exclusive access to President Donald J. Trump and his family as they embarked on his presidential re-election campaign. The series documents the campaign trail during the 2020 presidential election and into the aftermath that led to the events of January 6th – all told by the Trump family themselves.

Brandy Zadrozny is an award-winning investigative and features reporter for NBC News where she covers misinformation, extremism, and the internet. She’s written definitive stories on disinformation surrounding the 2020 election, QAnon conspiracy theories, and the anti-vaccination movement. She is a current research fellow at the Technology and Social Change Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, and host of the NBC News’ podcast, “Tiffany Dover is Dead.”

Vinay Shukla is a leading filmmaker and producer in the Indian documentary landscape. His debut feature, An Insignificant Man (2016, co-director Khushboo Ranka) was internationally acclaimed, set an anti-censorship precedent, and became India’s highest grossing documentary. He also won the HBO Best Short Film Award for Bureaucracy Sonata (2011). Vinay’s films have partnered with Sundance, DocSociety, IDFA, IDFA Bertha, and been celebrated at leading festivals, including London, Busan, Sheffield. He also produced the renowned board games ‘SHASN’, and ‘SHASN: AZADI’. Vinay’s second feature, While We Watched – a non-fiction newsroom drama – premiered at TIFF 2022, winning the prestigious Amplify Voices Award.

Rachel Boynton is an award-winning producer and director, known for getting access to places no one has filmed before. Her latest feature, Civil War (or, Who Do We Think We Are), is available to stream on Peacock. Her previous films, Our Brand is Crisis and Big Men, have won the IDA’s Best Feature Documentary Award, and have been nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and multiple News and Documentary Emmys, including Best Documentary. Boynton’s work has screened at numerous festivals worldwide and aired on the BBC, ARTE, DR, VPRO, CPB, and PBS, among many others.

Richard Stengel is the former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy in the Obama administration and the former Editor of Time. He is an on-air analyst for MSNBC.

Evgeny Afineevsky directed Oscar and Emmy nominated Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom, which has galvanized people around the world to demonstrate against oppressive dictatorships; Cries from Syria, which opened hearts and minds about people trapped in civil war after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival; and Francesco, for which he earned the trust of Pope Francis, joining him on a globe-trotting tour to alleviate division through love and kindness. His latest film Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom recently premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival.

Carol Dysinger directed short documentary Learning To Skateboard In a Warzone (If You’re A Girl)) which won both the Oscar and BAFTA for best short documentary. It also won best documentary short from IDA and at Tribeca Film Festival 2019. Dysinger is known for her feature length documentary Camp Victory, Afghanistan. It premiered in competition at SXSW 2010, and played at the Museum of Modern Art Doc Fortnight and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Carol was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and is currently developing a semi-autobiographical interactive piece depicting her experience with war, as well as completing One Bullet, a feature length documentary film. She is a story and editing consultant and a Professor at NYU Graduate Film School.

Matthew Heineman is an Academy Award®-nominated and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker. The Sundance Film Festival called Heineman “one of the most talented and exciting documentary filmmakers working today”, while Anne Thompson of Indiewire wrote that Heineman is a “respected and gifted filmmaker who combines gonzo fearlessness with empathetic sensitivity.”

He most recently directed, produced, shot and edited The First Wave, a feature documentary film with exclusive access inside one of New York City’s hardest-hit hospital systems during the harrowing first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The First Wave received the International Documentary Association’s prestigious Pare Lorentz Award, was shortlisted for an Academy Award®, and was nominated for seven Emmy® awards, winning Best Documentary, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing.

 

Jacob Soboroff is a correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC and the author of the New York Times bestseller Separated: Inside an American Tragedy. For his reporting on the Trump administration’s child separation policy, he received the 2019 Walter Cronkite Award for Individual Achievement by a National Journalist and the 2019 Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Nicole Cari and their two children.