Through community engagement campaigns, Community Classroom, and our flagship Community Cinema program, ITVS works to bring communities together and connect them with information, resources, and opportunities for education, engagement, and action.
For more than 18 years, ITVS has been a leader in community engagement programming that transforms film and public broadcasting into a powerful resource for individuals, communities, and organizations working on key social issues around the country.
Staff Bios
Duong-Chi Do (Associate Director of Engagement & Education) oversees national engagement and education activities in support of ITVS's award-winning films. Prior to joining ITVS in 2006, Chi spent six years with Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment and Leadership (APPEAL), where she launched a national youth leadership program that provided mentorship and training to high school students, resulting in more than 50 youth-led health and tobacco control advocacy initiatives across the U.S. and Pacific Islands. Chi began her career working for a community clinic that provided culturally and linguistically appropriate services for immigrants and refugees in central Ohio. Her favorite aspect of community engagement work at ITVS is witnessing the influence that just one film can have on individuals, groups and entire communities.
Sara Brissenden-Smith (National Community Engagement Coordinator) is an independent filmmaker and educator with strong ties to the San Francisco Bay Area nonprofit community. Sara brings 12 years of nonprofit experience to her work with ITVS, working closely with numerous youth and media organizations. She has extensive experience with youth program management, facilitation and leadership development training. Sara is the founder of Brown Lady Productions, which creates documentary films and products that support the empowerment and health of women and communities of color. Brown Lady Productions’ films have been used in workshop and educational settings as a catalyst for dialogue and increased understanding of social issues related to young Black women. Sara’s most recently produced documentary, Illuminations: Outside Looking In was an Official Selection for the San Francisco Black Film Festival, and made its international premiere at the Africa World Documentary Film Festival in Lagos, Nigeria. Sara received her B.S. degree from Santa Clara University, in Sociology with an Ethnic Studies minor.
Annelise Wunderlich (National Community Engagement and Education Manager) joined ITVS in 2005, and worked for four years as a production manager on domestic and international programs before moving to the Community Engagement team. Prior to ITVS, Annelise has worked as a videographer and producer in the Bay Area since graduating from UC Berkeley's School of Journalism in 2003. She was co-producer for Maquilapolis, an ITVS-funded film directed by Vicky Funari and Sergio De La Torre, and assistant editor on P.O.V. programs Thirst and Discovering Dominga. Her own film, Crystal Harvest, won the Golden Gate Award for Best Bay Area Documentary Short at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2004, and was broadcast on KVIE, KTEH and KQED. She also worked as an immigration paralegal and refugee program coordinator for Amnesty International USA.
Nallaly Jimenez (Engagement and Education Assistant) graduated from Sonoma State University with a degree in Communication Studies with an emphasis in Radio Broadcasting. Before joining ITVS, she served as media coordinator in a public relations firm in San Francisco where she executed media outreach and developed correspondence with the press. In her spare time, she volunteers locally as a media literacy workshop leader at About-Face, a nonprofit organization dedicated to equip young girls with tools to understand and resist harmful media messages that affect their self-esteem and body image. Nallaly enjoys being part of the engagement team at ITVS because she wants to enable communities to become critical, analytical, media-savvy consumers.
Consultant Bios
Christine Allen Henkel has grown up with Public Television. She started as an envelope stuffer for her dinner, was a runner in high school, pledge coordinator for a small station in college and started working with ITVS as an assistant to the former regional outreach coordinator. She has worked in outreach and community education with Americorps NCCC and various mentoring programs for high school and college woman. Christine works in numerous community groups all in efforts to create a community that talks and cares for each other. She resides in Star ID.
Patrick Baroch is a graduate of New York University's Tisch School for the Arts. He has worked in film distribution at the classics divisions of Orion Pictures and Sony Pictures publicizing such films as Howards End, Indochine, and Slacker. During his fifteen years in Seattle, Patrick has produced a public access cable show, designed and built furniture, shown his paintings at local galleries and worked in a number of industries as a graphic designer, publicist, and advertising account executive. Patrick is also proud to have been a member of the programming committee for the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival from 1999 through 2002. In 2205 and 2006 he directed four feature-length multi-camera modern dance performance videos and authored DVDs for each. His short documentary about Seattle's gay bingo, the country's largest, aired on Current TV in 2007 and 2008. Patrick has worked with Community Cinema since 2005.
Michon Boston organizes Community Cinema screenings at Busboys and Poets and the Washington DC Jewish Community Center. She also works with ITVS International to present the Global Perspective Film Series with Meridian International Center. Michon is an events producer and marketer, writer/blogger and video producer. Other projects on Michon’s watch include her “Church Ladies Cake Diaries” video project, the Big Read DC (from 2007 – 2010), the “Food and Folklore” series at Eatonville Restaurant, and various PBS outreach initiatives at WHUT Howard University Television. Michon says her favorite thing about Community Cinema is meeting new, exciting people who do great things for and in her hometown city D.C.
Desiree Gutierrez is the founder of the communications consulting firm, MAVEN IMAGE. Her experience includes a hybrid of nonprofit, social action and entertainment campaigns. Prior to creating MAVEN IMAGE, Desiree was a publicist with ITVS and managed the publicity efforts of the Independent Lens series. She also supported five, KCET-PBS productions, including Tavis Smiley and California Connected. Desiree worked extensively with Artists for Amnesty‹the entertainment division of Amnesty International USA‹and her freelance clients have included: TNT and TBS Broadcasting, Antiques Roadshow, American Express, The Craigslist Foundation, The Ginetta Sagan Fund, Outdoor Gear, Oxfam International and The Pasadena Pops Orchestra. Desiree has produced numerous successful events including Oscar parties, television launch parties, film screenings and heritage events.
Roseli Ilano has eight years of community organizing experience with an emphasis on integrating arts into youth-led social justice campaigns. She has worked with The East Bay Asian Youth Center, The Ella Baker Center For Human Rights and Asian Pacific Islander Youth Promoting Advocacy and Leadership. Roseli first came to ITVS in 2007 as a Regional Outreach Coordinator, producing Community Cinema screenings in San Francisco and Oakland. As a Regional Outreach Coordinator, she piloted a partnership with DEAF Media to ensure Community Cinema screenings were accessible to the deaf and hearing impaired, as well as innovated ways to reach youth and high-school age students. She brings this hands-on experience to her role in supporting Regional Outreach Coordinators and Producing Partners across the country.
Allison Inman is a freelance copywriter and communication consultant based in Nashville. After a dozen years of corporate work, she shifted to public media, leading communication efforts at Colorado’s statewide public television network, Rocky Mountain PBS in Denver. There she worked on a dynamic communication/marketing team that helped set a new standard for community engagement in public television. In Denver she coordinated a Community Cinema program that now includes seven Colorado cities. When she moved back to the South in 2008, she brought Community Cinema to Nashville with partners Nashville Public Television, Nashville Public Library, Nashville Film Festival and Hands On Nashville. She is currently producing her first film, a documentary about civil rights activist Hector Black, and volunteering with Galaxy Star Peacemakers, a gang outreach organization she worked with when screening “Crips and Bloods: Made in America” in Nashville.
Naomi Walker has been with ITVS since 2006 as coordinator of the Community Cinema program in Chicago. She formerly served as outreach director for Cinema/Chicago for several years, expanding their education program to include a monthly film screening series for Chicago public high schools. In her capacity as outreach director, Naomi also organized the Teachers Institute for Media Studies, a series of workshops exploring ways for educators to use multimedia in the classroom, and served as director of the Future Filmmakers Festival, which showcased the work of filmmakers under 20. Naomi works out of The Michael Rabiger Center for Documentary at Columbia College, where she teaches Outreach and Engagement Strategies for the Documentary and mentors young documentary filmmakers. Naomi spins records at benefits for local grassroots nonprofit organizations and is a regular DJ for the monthly Peace Party.
Sara Zia Ebrahimi learned to talk in Iran and to press the record button in the U.S. She’s been attempting to convince people to listen to her stories from the perspective of a child of immigrant hippies ever since. Her adventures in media production have ranged from DJing a radio show on a low-power FM radio station she co-founded to working as the director of development and communications at Bread & Roses Community Fund, a community foundation dedicated to supporting grassroots social change initiatives in the Philadelphia region. She’s been working for over 10 years on trying to break the record for the most different ways to be affiliated with Temple University, first as an undergraduate student, then completing her MFA in Film and Media Arts and now as an adjunct instructor. She also works as a freelance consultant doing events and community outreach for organizations such as Independent Television Service's (ITVS) Community Cinema program and the Leeway Foundation's Art & Change outreach efforts. Ebrahimi has served as a juror for the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, the Next Frame Film Festival, the Dereck Freeze Screenwriting Competition, and the University Film and Video Association’s Carole Fielding Student Award, also as a board member of the Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Association and the Black Lily Women's Film and Video Festival. Her short films — primarily personal documentaries exploring some element of the immigrant experience — have screened internationally and been awarded grants from Chicken & Egg Pictures, Rooftop Films. and the Leeway Foundation. She resides in Philadelphia, PA.
