Susan was the first BYkids Board member and serves as a Film Mentor to María Ceballos Paz, a 16-year-old girl who is one of the estimated four million Colombians driven from their homes by decades of civil war. With Susan’s mentoring, María puts a human face on the cost of civil war and the drug trade.

Among Hollywood’s top TV producers, Susan has produced shows for Discovery, National Geographic, Fox, ABC, NBC and CBS. She received an Emmy nomination for Undercover Boss.

“I am truly excited to be a part of a project that provides a forum for children to tell their own stories, stories that are often the most genuine yet often misinterpreted or never even heard. By giving them the tools to create their own documentaries, these stories can finally be told from their perspective, a point of view that will hopefully strike a chord with others in similar situations throughout the world. By enabling such storytelling, BYkids will work to bridge cultural gaps, as well as help illustrate the universality of the human condition. At a time when people tend to focus on our differences as opposed to our similarities, such a contribution is invaluable.”

James V. Hart (J.V.) hails from Shreveport, Louisiana and grew up in Fort Worth, Texas thriving on drive-in movies and Saturday matinees. He began producing films in the 1970’s, and his first feature film, Summer Run, opened the USA film festival at Southern Methodist University, his alma mater, in Dallas, Texas. After settling in New York City, J.V. began his screenwriting career, writing and producing such celebrated films as Hook directed by Steven Spielberg, Bram Stoker’s Dracula directed by Francis Ford Coppola and Muppet Treasure Island directed by Brian Henson. Other writing and producing credits include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Sahara, Lara Croft: Tombraider — The Cradle of Life and August Rush. His production of the 20th Century Fox film The Legend of the Leafmen, a collaboration with children’s book illustrator William Joyce, is his first animated epic and is followed by a book series by J.V. and Joyce.

J.V.’s first novel, Captain Hook — Adventures of a Notorious Youth, was published by Laura Geringer Books for Harper Collins and named Top Ten Young Adult Books in 2006 by the American Library Association. Its sequel, Captain Hook — Pirate King, was released in 2011.

“Made by young people from all ethnic origins and cultures, BYkids films make us feel our co-existence across the planet. They’re proof that the arts will save us.”

“BYkids is an extraordinary opportunity for the next generation of cinematic storytellers. It also provides an intimate window into their disparate worlds, and a means of self-expression and support not found elsewhere.”

Karen Goodman’s documentaries have garnered an Academy award (”Strangers No More, 2011″), three previous Academy Award nominations, many Emmys and the Dupont-Columbia Award for Independent Programming. She has received filmmaking grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, The Ford Foundation and the American Film Institute. She has been making documentaries for nearly four decades and is currently working on Season Two of the HBO series MASTERCLASS. She is a partner in the Simon & Goodman Picture Company, based in New York City.

Her documentaries have been broadcast nationally on PBS and HBO, and screened at festivals around the world including Sundance, New Directors/New Films, London, Berlin, Montreal, and St. Petersburg.

Ms. Goodman is a member of the Executive Committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Documentary Branch. She has served as a consultant to the National Endowment for the Humanities Media Program, and as a judge for the Emmy Awards and the DuPont-Columbia Broadcast Journalism Award.

Angalis is an American screenwriter, director and photographer living in New York City. He is currently a graduate film MFA thesis candidate at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. His two short films BUST (2024) and The Dalles (2023) had their premieres at Sundance. His photo work and writing have appeared in publications like Purple, i-D, Dazed, Artforum, Cultured, Teen Vogue, The New York Times and GQ. He graduated from Columbia University in 2016 with a BA in English.

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Maryann De Leo is an Academy Award winning filmmaker who directs and produces courageous documentaries of international scope for both film and television. Honored with numerous awards, including two Emmy Awards, an Alfred I. duPont – Columbia University Award, and a CableACE Award, De Leo’s work has premiered at the American Museum of the Moving Image and has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Her 2003 documentary, Chernobyl Heart, revealing the devastating effects of radiation on children after the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl, garnered worldwide attention and won Best Documentary Short at the 2003 Academy Awards. De Leo’s other well-known titles include High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell, Rape: Cries from the Heartland and Bellevue: Inside Out.

De Leo is also an internationally renowned photographer with the Sipa Agency, and runs her own production company, Downtown TV Documentaries. She teaches at the School of Visual Arts graduate program in social documentary.

“This is what life is all about, reaching your hand to others and having the privilege to witness their imagination.”

Marshall Curry is a director, writer and editor of fiction and non-fiction films. He won the Academy Award for writing and directing the short narrative film, THE NEIGHBORS’ WINDOW. He was previously nominated three times for Oscars for his documentary films, STREET FIGHT (about Cory Booker’s first run for Mayor of Newark), A NIGHT AT THE GARDEN (about a Nazi rally that filled Madison Square Garden in 1939) and IF A TREE FALLS: A STORY OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT (about a group of environmental activists who committed multi-million dollar arsons). His other films include RACING DREAMS (about two boys and a girl who want to become NASCAR drivers) and POINT AND SHOOT (about a controversial American who joined the Libyan rebels fighting Muammar Gaddafi).

He has also directed VR/360 films, animated shorts and commercials.

He has been nominated for two WGA Awards and two Emmys and has appeared frequently on television and radio including Morning Edition, Charlie Rose and The Tavis Smiley Show. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College where he studied Comparative Religion.

In addition to his active role on the Board and his support of the launch of BYkids, Ric serves as a BYkids Film Mentor. Ric is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, and is best known for his groundbreaking PBS series, New York: A Documentary Film and his documentaries on Eugene O’Neill, Ansel Adams and Andy Warhol.

www.ricburns.com

Camilla Becket is co-owner of Becket Films, an independent production company based in California and Australia. She produced and directed the multi-award-winning documentary, The Seeds of Vandana Shiva, about the life of eco-activist Dr. Vandana Shiva.

Previously, she co-produced the award-winning Sons of Africa, about the sons of East African leaders Idi Amin and Julius Nyerere, who climbed Kilimanjaro on a historic peace climb between their two nations. She also directed an award-winning film about childhood epilepsy and co-produced nine films for the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church (The Green Patriarch) who brought together religious leaders, scientists and journalists to focus on ecologically threatened water bodies around the world.

“It was incredibly rewarding to witness Diya’s growing interest in filmmaking, evolving clarity around the story she wanted to share and emerging confidence in her own voice. Diya’s life experience is special, as she lives in a way we could all aspire to. She shows us that it is possible to live a modern life with a small ecological footprint and with respect to the natural world on which we all depend.”