An island girl with big dreams.

Jenniffer (she/her/hers), was born and raised in "La Isla del Encanto," Puerto Rico, and migrated to the United States in 2018 after graduating from Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in Puerto Rico.  While there, she majored in film production with a minor in acting, writing, and directing. She directed “Se Quitó," a short film narrating her story regarding the horrendous 2017 hurricane Maria. 

After graduating, she worked with an HIV organization, directing a short documentary film about the injustices people with HIV go through after being diagnosed. In the Fall of 2020, she became an MFA Candidate in the School of Cinematic Arts (Film & TV Production) at the University of Southern California. While at USC, she has had the opportunity to collaborate on many short films. She also wrote and directed "IT Happens," a short film about human trafficking. Later, in the Summer of 2021, she co-wrote "Of Reasons and Rumors," a heartfelt narrative short film collaborating with Vaccine LA, an organization targeting the Hispanic Community, to confront and combat the COVID-vaccine misinformation. "Of Reasons and Rumors" is promoted by the National Hispanic Alliance for Health to its 15 million members.

Jenniffer Gonzalez Martinez has concentrated on narrative filmmaking, focusing on the female experience. She is currently in pre-production for her graduate thesis film “Renacer,” about the stigma of abortion, based on her life's story.

Kelsey McGee (she/her/hers) is an LA-based writer, director, and producer. In 2019, she graduated from Boston College with a B.A. in English Language and Literature and minors in both Creative Writing and Faith, Peace, and Justice. While at BC, her writing and poetry were published in various New England-based literary journals. Kelsey received the "Salmanowitz Grant for Moral Courage in Film" for her documentary thesis, The Art of Reconciliation, which follows the intersection of art, conflict, and peace-making efforts in Belfast & Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland. After graduating, Kelsey moved to the Bay Area, where she worked as a crisis services advocate for survivors of gender-based violence.

Kelsey is currently pursuing her MFA in Film & Television Production at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. A lifelong dancer, Kelsey directed Danceable as a USC thesis-level graduate film following three dancers with disabilities, which has been featured at the Cucalorus Film Festival and ReelAbilities Pittsburgh. She is producing Renacer, a USC thesis film about finding community after abortion. 

Kelsey is deeply passionate about the transformative power of truth-telling through art. She is focused on telling strong female-focused narratives.

Bobbie is a Los Angeles based filmmaker and writer hailing from New York. She graduated in 2019 from Mount Holyoke College with a double major in Film Studies and Politics. She’s worked at Tribeca Film Institute, National Geographic, and Marvel Entertainment creating work for their social media platforms and websites. After graduating college, she started to work at a local independent movie theater that showed movies on film and fell in love with analog filmmaking. When the theater shut down during the Covid lockdown, she taught herself how to develop 35mm color film and started developing friends and family’s old rolls in her parent’s basement. She is currently an MFA candidate at USC School of Cinematic Arts in the Film and Television Production program focusing on producing, directing, and writing. Last Summer, she produced and co-wrote A Karaoke Space Odyssey, a USC thesis film. In her free time, she hangs out with her little poodle dude Rooster and they both say hi to the hummingbirds who visit the balcony of her LA apartment.

Ximena Davis is a Los Angeles-based Producer, Writer, and Director. She began her film career in documentary and independent productions, and as Founder and President of the first Filmmaking Club at her undergraduate institution, Kalamazoo College.

Her feature-length documentary, “Culture You Can Eat,” was screened at multiple film festivals across the country and received Honors from Kalamazoo College, where she graduated in 2019. Her passion for reproductive rights began in documentary, where she created a short film looking at the social justice movements in 2017.

In 2020, she had the honor of being one of the Directors of Photography for the independent film, The Ninth Raider, which partnered with NFT Blue and Ark.io to merge digital currency and art in the film world. Currently, she is an MFA Candidate at USC’s prestigious School of Cinematic Arts, where her love of film has led to many collaborations as a writer, director, producer, and cinematographer. She is working towards one day having her own production company and is currently developing a TV series about her various escapades in and around LA. She is looking forward to helping bring the story of Valeria to the big screen to highlight how important reproductive rights are for everyone.

Meg Weck is a Los Angeles-based DP whose work is notable for naturalistic lighting, inventive composition, and the use of color.

She is drawn to stories that explore personal identity, sexuality, grief, vulnerability, and the meaning of family.

Her love for images developed at a young age, and she began to take photographs in high school, taking after her Grandfather, a black and white stills photographer. During her studies abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark, she developed a love of European art house cinema and minimalist imagery, which heavily inspires her work. Following her graduation from Tufts University from the Film and Media Studies program, she was accepted into the School of Cinematic Arts’ Masters of Fine Arts Program in Film Production.

In Spring 2022, Meg photographed Danceable, a USC graduate thesis-level short documentary following three disabled dancers as they navigate their creative process. She was a 2022 recipient of the Panavision New Filmmaker Program Grant, and her work has been selected for screening at LA Shorts Fest, Cucalorus Film Festival, ReelAbilities Film Festival, and Zed Fest. 

Morel Malcolm was raised on a small farm in Upstate New York, where she gained entrepreneurial knowledge and creative inspiration. She attended undergrad at NYU, acquiring a BS in Media studies and Film Images. After spending time in cities like NY and Miami, Morel continued to follow her dream of visual storytelling in LA at USC. 

An ex-Filipino-soap-opera-translator-turned-filmmaker, Achim Mendoza has pursued a diverse array of interests. His passion for film started in his teens, when Marilou Diaz-Abaya, a prestigious Filipino director, offered to mentor him. As a teenager, Achim would fly back and forth between his hometown of Davao and Manila to attend her classes.

Back in the Philippines, he helped create “Stages Sessions,” a YouTube channel that focuses on indie Filipino musicians and poets. His 2021 musical short “Connection” has been doing the rounds in the festival circuit and was most recently screened at the 38th Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. He is currently an MFA candidate in Film and TV Production at USC and is the recipient of the prestigious Annenberg Fellowship Award. He is also in post-production for his sci-fi rom-com karaoke musical thesis, “A Karaoke Space Odyssey.” In his spare time, Achim likes to perfect his family’s longsilog recipe. 

Marian D. Cook is a former journalist and current USC student pursuing an MFA in Film and TV production. She graduated from Spring Hill College in 2019, Summa Cum Laude, and with honors, with a BA in Journalism. She's been published over a dozen times, covering topics from local news to federal healthcare legislation. She's directed, produced, edited, and shot (basically a one-woman show) a range of documentaries from plastic surgery to segregation in the church. And she is a recipient of the Autry D. Greer Media Service Award and the Catholic Press Award. But she also has a passion for narrative film. She's currently focused her talents on editing, producing, and directing strong, female-led stories, especially that of Latinas. Her latest projects include "Pay My Bill," starring her mother and Maria Garcia, which deals with the everyday struggles of immigrants and the social pressures of assimilation; and "Bad Hombrewood," a short documentary directed by Guillermo Casarin about Latinx representation in Hollywood, starring Phil Lord, Guillermo Del Toro, Lee Unkrich, Melissa Fumero, and a range of Latinx talent that demonstrate the beauty and diversity of the Latinx community, that won Best Student Documentary at the American Pavilion at the 2022 Cannes International Film Festival.

Vanessa Kao is a director, writer, and editor currently pursuing her film and television production studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. 

As a director, her films have won Silver Remi Award at WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival and have been screened at CineAsian Films and Taiwan (Chiayi) Performing Arts Center. 

She has co-directed a narrative feature film produced by USC.

As an acting coach, her work has been selected at numerous Academy Award-qualifying festivals, including Santa Barbara International Film Festival and Ann Arbor Film Festival, and has won the SXSW Midnight Shorts Audience Award, Special Jury Prize at Seattle International Film Festival, and Best Narrative Short at Frameline Festival.

As an editor, her work has been selected for ReelAbilties and Cucalorus Film Festivals. She is currently working on the post-production team for a documentary series directed by Lauren Greenfield (Emmy-award-winning filmmaker and two-time Directors’ Guild and Writers’ Guild award nominee). She is also an assistant editor of the upcoming feature film sponsored by USC.