Diversity & Inclusion Program — 2025 Panelists

Jesse Randall is a queer filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, and film festival director. His work focuses on LGBTQIA+ characters surviving a shrinking America in peril. His work is featured on over 35+ streaming platforms, including Tubi, Cinverse, and Plex TV. Jesse is also the acquisitions and director of the Echelon Studios International Film Festival. ESIFF focuses on helping filmmakers from underrepresented backgrounds find distribution for their films. Echelon Studios has sixteen-plus years of experience in film distribution and championing the voices of independent filmmakers across the world.

Tema Staig is the Executive Director of Women In Media, an organization that she founded in 2010. In 2016 she established the searchable CrewList database as the go-to place to find, vet, and hire women who work behind the scenes in the entertainment industry. Soon after, she transitioned the grass roots community into a vibrant nonprofit organization. Women In Media hosts industry events, training, and networking.

Ms. Staig has a background in scenic art and has worked as a production designer, art director, and producer. She is best known for her work on the feature films KISSING JESSICA STEIN, HAPPY HOUR, BATTLEFIELD AMERICA, and AMERICAN SPLENDOR as well as commercials and music videos. Ms. Staig was LA County Woman of the Year for 2023.

Jacqueline Elyse Rosenthal is a DGA Grand Prize & Student-Emmy winning Writer/Director who uses cinema as a tool for empathy. She is known for BACKLOG (Cannes Official Selection) her graduate thesis exposé on the rape kit backlogs, announced in Deadline as the Winner of Catalyst Studios/Stage 32 Empowering Women Feature Screenplay Competition. The short film screened at 85 film festivals internationally, 10 impact screenings, and brought home awards from 25 film festivals, including the Limelight Award for Social Justice at Ojai Film Festival and an Anthem Award for Film/Media in Social Justice. The film is currently streaming on Kanopy, Mometu, and Samansa.

Most recently, she was named "one of the Top Voices in Virtual Production" by the CTO of Paramount for her sci-fi epic, Europa, a film she wrote and directed on SONY’s Culver City backlot as the 2024 R&D ETC@USC Innovation Grant. With two months of pre-production Jacqueline helmed a +1,500 crew for 42 days on SONY's Stage 7 LED Volume, as the first Narrative Virtual Production on the stage, co-owned and operated by Oscar-winning VFX company Pixomondo. The film was the inaugural recipient of the NFMLA NewNarratives Grant, with an additional endorsement by Hollywood Climate Summit and Fiscally Sponsored by Film Independent. The film warns about privatized space missions and calls to protect Earth before turning to colonize the resources of other planets.

Jacqueline is a recent graduate of USC's School of Cinematic Arts with an MFA in Film & TV Production, where she attended as the John Huston Scholar for Outstanding Director. She is represented by 3 Arts and Culture Creative. She is dedicated to helping the next generation of auteurs stay true to their voice and find footing in the ever shifting landscape of the entertainment industry, through her role as Head of Development on The Reel Champions, a female and non-binary Executive mentorship pipeline organization. Fellowships: Athena Writer's Lab, Stowe Story Labs, Creator’s Playlab (mentor, Palme d'Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul), Fox Fellowship, Athena List (Semi Finalist), Hallmark Make Her Mark (Finalist). Jacqueline has four features in development.

Magdalena Edwards is a Chilean Filmmaker, Actor, Strategic Communicator, and Stand-Up Comedian. She was born in Santiago, Chile, during the Pinochet dictatorship, which her parents fled when she was one-month old. They landed in Hyde Park, Chicago, where both her parents pursued their doctorates in Economics. The family moved to Los Angeles, where Magdalena was raised until her junior year of high school, which is when the family moved for her father's career. This is where she joined the Sidwell Friends School, and she learned so many things about being a good human.

Magdalena attended Harvard, where she majored in Social Studies with an honor thesis on the Chilean poet Raúl Zurita, then moved to Santiago to spend time with her grandparents and work as an ESL teacher and, later, as a journalist at El Mercurio. Magdalena then lands in Los Angeles to pursue her doctorate in Comparative Literature and Translation at UCLA with a dissertation on the poet Elizabeth Bishop, a project helmed by her advisors the poet Stephen Yenser and the translator Michael Heim.

Her debut short film as Writer-Director ANNIVERSARY (2026) -- the DP is Gareth Taylor (Stranger Things, Sound of Freedom, South Park) -- is in post-production. She is the PA & Art Department Coordinator for BYE BYE BARBARITO (2024), written by Susannah Rodriguez Drissi and directed by Michelle Salcedo Farnham, a narrative short funded by NETFLIX and NALIP (Latino Lens). BYE BYE BARBARITO had its NYC premiere in September 2025 at the NEW YORK LATINO FILM FESTIVAL and will screen again in NYC in November 2025, at Lincoln Center, at DIFF. Magdalena will play the lead's mother in FRAGILE BABY (2026) written by Paul Alcazar and directed by Anthony Cook. She plays Rica in Edward L. Plumb's ANGEL WITH A GUN (2024). Magdalena is the lead and a producer on A SHORT STORY (2019), a short film written and directed by Lucia Senesi. More to come!

You may call her Doctor M, but you don't have to of course!, and you may find her on Instagram @msmagda8lena and on Substack at EROS INCUBATOR where she is the Chief Experiment Officer. Amén Olé Amén.

Jyoti Sarda is a Los Angeles-based producer and the founder of Nimble Media LLC, a content production and strategic consulting company. She brings her twenty five years experience as a senior-level global marketing executive at advertising agencies and studios like Fox and Paramount to developing impactful documentary and narrative content.

Her latest project is the narrative feature LILLY, about fair pay activist Lilly Ledbetter, starring Patricia Clarkson which Variety called "a whistleblower drama for our time." She also produced the POV documentary series And She Could Be Next, which chronicles women of color transforming American politics as organizers and elected officials. Jyoti served as co-executive producer on documentaries Equal Means Equal (2016), Sirens (2022), and as Executive Producer for Black Barbie (2023). She is recognized for her commitment to impact-driven storytelling and representation.

Chantal Massuh has always been a creative world builder, having spent the beginning of her film career building and designing film sets for features and network TV. Her experience led her to joining the Art Director’s guild in 2018 as one of the youngest members in the entire guild. Her passion for creating transitioned into writing, directing and producing after her short films garnered attention at film festivals and from MTVu.

Her debut feature film Thirst Trap, made on a shoe string budget, has been featured in over 40 film festivals and won over 15 awards including various best director, best producer, best production design, best costumes, best trailer and best score from festivals like Hollywood Horror Fest, Marina Del Rey Film Festival, Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival, Toronto Horror Fest, Breakout Music and Film Festival, Echelon Film Fest, Ethos Film Awards and a prestigious fearless filmmaker award from Simi Valley Film Festival noting the theme of her movie sex work and violence against women as a topic that needed to be exposed. Echelon Studios distributed Thirst Trap and it can now be viewed on various platforms like Tubi & Mometu.

Chantal continues to explore themes pertaining to women and their struggles with trauma and is currently in production for her next feature film The Bad Habits Of Unhappy People to be shot in 2026.

Douglas Clarke is the writer, director, and composer behind Soulmate, the Off-Broadway play captivating audiences with its mystical exploration of love, loss, and transformation within the LGBTQ+ community. Praised for its diverse cast and inclusive narrative, Soulmate premiered at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre in Los Angeles, sold out its extended run, and went on to an acclaimed Off-Broadway extended run in New York City. Clarke is now expanding Soulmate into a multi-city tour and feature film adaptation, actively seeking funding partners to bring its next chapter to life.

A lifelong innovator at the crossroads of technology and storytelling, Clarke has spearheaded creative projects across film, television, and theater as the Founder of Razorwire Productions. His pioneering technology work with companies such as DTS, THX, and client NBCUniversal reflects a career defined by boundary-pushing innovation, artistry and a passion for crafting immersive, emotionally resonant experiences that connect audiences worldwide.

Catie Skipp is a documentary filmmaker from Miami, FL, whose work challenges preconceptions through intimate, character-driven storytelling. Her latest short, Monster Slayer, premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Festival and most recently won Best Documentary Short and Best Female Focus Film at the Cordillera International Film Festival. Her previous film, Florida Woman, was featured in PBS’s Reel South and earned an IDA nomination for Best Curated Series. Skipp’s producing credits include Las Sandinistas!, Netflix’s Trial By Media, and Disney+’s Marvel’s 616. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she is Head of Development at Supper Club.

Hyon Jung Lee is a Korean-American writer, producer, and a die-hard New Yorker. After learning how to splice film on a Steenbeck in the 90's, she started her TV career as an Assistant Editor, working on everything from low-rent infomercials to docs to MTV specials. She bailed on the dark, soundproofed rooms to work in digital media and branded content, ultimately leading creative teams to a 2021 Cannes Silver Lion and a 2017 Creative Arts Emmy. After getting laid off from Google, she spent her severance to finally make her first short film, which has screened at 44 festivals around the world and is currently streaming on PBS. Now in her cybersecurity era, she has led successful “deliberate slop” ad campaigns, using AI to poke fun of bad AI.

She holds a BFA in Film/TV from NYU Tisch and an MA in Consumer Behavior from NYU Gallatin. The degrees are not at all remarkable, but the journey might be. She’s the latchkey kid of a nail salon worker and a cobbler who spent most of her childhood curled up at the public library. As an immigrant and a first-gen college student to a knowledge worker, she’s been on all sides of luck, opportunity and privilege. She’s committed to telling underrepresented stories about identity, class, and found family.

Michael founded Good Planet Innovation, which has now become a leading production sustainability consulting company and B-corporation for commercials, entertainment and live events. He also is Co-Founder and Chairman of Green the Bid, a non-profit organization providing resources and community to shift the global advertising industry to standardized sustainable and regenerative practices. Michael contributes to numerous charitable and environmental projects, and also sits on the boards of the Harbor Point Charitable Foundation and the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (West). He enjoys rescuing animals, listening to live music, and taking long walks on the beach while contemplating how to best live compassionately in purpose, impact, and integrity.