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People
United
States Staff:
Joe Lambert, Executive Director
Emily Paulos, Managing Director
Amy Hill, Silence Speaks/Special Projects Director
Daniel Weinshenker, Rocky Mountain/Midwest Region
Director
Andrea Spagat, Northern California/Pacific Northwest
Region Director
Gayle Nicholls-Ali, Southern California Region Director
Stefani Sese, East Coast Region Director
Allison Myers, Southwest Region Director
Theresa
Perez, Manager of Administration
Jennifer Nazzal, Post-Production
Supervisor
Laura Hadden, Americorps Vista
Carrie Cook, Americorps Vista
Canadian
Staff:
Robert Kershaw, Canadian Projects Director
Jennifer LaFontaine, Toronto Region Director
Michelle Spencer, Alberta
Region Director
Field
Representatives / Facilitators:
Katerina Binova-Barbour, Prague, Czech Republic
Anne Hveljsel, Copenhagen, Denmark
Nikoline Alice Lohmann, Copenhagen, Denmark
Darcy Alexandra, Dublin, Ireland
Eddie Westbroek, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Jose Savacem, Lisbon, Portugal
China Ching, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Lisa Nelson-Haynes, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.
Lisa Whitmer, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.
Lianne Scott, Washington, DC, U.S.A.
Board
Members:
Alfredo DeAvila, The Applied Research Center
Erin Egan, Microsoft Corporation
Stuart Gannes, Technology Consultant
Kristina Woolsey, The New Media Consortium
United
States Staff:

Joe
Lambert
Executive Director
Joe
founded the Center for Digital Storytelling (formerly the San Francisco
Digital Media Center) in 1994, with wife Nina Mullen and colleague Dana
Atchley. Together they developed a unique computer training and arts program
that today is known as the Standard Digital Storytelling
Workshop. This process grew out of Joe's long running collaboration
with Dana on the solo theatrical multimedia work, Next Exit.
Since then, Joe has traveled the world to spread the practice of digital
storytelling and has authored and produced curricula in many contexts,
including the Digital Storytelling Cookbook,
the principle manual for the workshop process, and Digital
Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community.
Born
and raised in Texas, Joe has been active in the Bay Area arts community
for the last twenty-five years as an arts activist, producer, administrator,
teacher, writer, and director. In 1986, he co-founded Life On The Water,
a successful non-profit production company that offered a broad array
of programs serving San Francisco's diverse communities. Joe has produced
over 500 shows, ranging from theatrical runs, single performances, special
events, citywide festivals, subscription series, conferences, and digital
story screenings. Prior to his career in the arts, Joe was trained as
a community organizer and assisted in numerous local, statewide, and national
public policy campaigns on issues of social justice and economic equity.
He has a B.A. in Theater and Political Science from the University of
California at Berkeley.
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Emily
Paulos
Managing Director
Emily
is a practicing visual artist who grew up in a large family in Iowa. She
received a BFA in painting and printmaking and completed her MA in Art
Education at the University of Iowa, with an emphasis on narrative and
technology. Her thesis took the form of a website entitled The
Mom Project, which examines issues of family narrative and the use
of technology in the art classroom. In addition to her experience assisting
University of Iowa faculty and student teachers with the development of
multimedia and Electronic Portfolios, Emily taught high school art teacher
for five years, specializing in web design, video production, and photography.
Before joining the Center in 2002, she also spent time working abroad,
volunteering as an art teacher in Japan and pursuing photography and printmaking
in Italy and Sweden.
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Amy
Hill
Silence Speaks/Special Projects Director
Amy
is a storyteller, documentary filmmaker, and public health consultant
who was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her ten-year involvement
in coordinating community-based public health and community development
projects in California and nationally led her in 1999 to co-found Silence
Speaks, an international digital storytelling initiative offering
a safe, supportive environment for telling and sharing stories that all
too often remain unspoken. She continues to lead this and other global
health and human rights-related projects at the Center. Prior to coming
on board as a full time staff member in 2005, she co-produced and edited
a series of educational documentaries about HIV and AIDS in Ethiopia.
Amy has a BA in British & American Literature from Scripps College
and an MA in Education/Gender Studies from Stanford University.
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Daniel
Weinshenker
Rocky Mountain/Midwest Region Director
Daniel
has been telling stories and teaching others to tell stories for more
than ten years. After leaving the San Francisco Bay Area, where he was
born and raised, he taught creative writing for three years while working
on his MA in Creative Writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Daniel then spent the next few years in marketing and advertising, helping
companies deliver their messages. Although he's not a therapist, his mother
is. (Doesn’t that count for something?) in 2003, Daniel opened the
Center’s first Regional Office, based in Denver, Colorado. He specializes
in developing projects that explore the impact of digital storytelling
for youth and within the health sector, and has also done considerable
work with local museums and radio/television broadcasters. In collaboration
with the University of Colorado, Daniel developed the first accredited
certificate course in digital storytelling facilitation.
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Andrea
Spagat
Northern California/Pacific Northwest Region Director
Andrea
was raised by her bilingual/bicultural family in both Argentina and the
United States. Before joining the Center’s staff in 2006, she worked
for twelve years as an educator in a variety of settings, including a
jail GED project in Wisconsin, a training program for rural schoolteachers
in Bolivia, and, most recently, a substance abuse prevention initiative
for youth in San Francisco. From 1999 to 2001, she was a Violence Prevention
Academic Fellow with the California Wellness Foundation, focusing on aftercare
services for youth exiting detention facilities. In addition to leading
numerous bilingual (English-Spanish) digital storytelling workshops with
youth and members of immigrant communities, Andrea developed the Center’s
Workshop for Educators, which tailors digital
storytelling for K-12 classroom use. She has a MS in Adult Education.
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Gayle
Nicholls-Ali
Southern California Region Director
Gayle
is an award winning fine arts photographer, documentarian, and digital
storytelling facilitator. Born in Barbados and raised there and in Brooklyn,
she attended Mt. Holyoke College and was Poet Laureate at Hunter College,
where she produced a series of poetry magazines and coordinated multimedia
poetry readings. The L.A. Host Committee of the 2000 Democratic National
Convention selected her photos for an exhibit called Faces of L.A. More
recently, Gayle has worked as a multimedia assistant teacher and web designer
at Pasadena City College. She has been on staff with the Center since
2006, and focuses primarily on social justice oriented and youth efforts.
Gayle is currently pursuing a MA in Human Development, with a focus on
Storytelling as Art Therapy, at Pacific Oaks College.
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Stefani
Sese
East Coast Region Director
Stefani
began telling stories professionally in the late 1970’s, as a founder
and member of the Teatro Nuestro Latino theater company, based in her
hometown of Washington, D.C. While attending George Washington University,
Stefani shifted her focus from theater to television production. She worked
as both an editor and a producer for more than 15 years prior to joining
the Center’s staff in 2007, receiving awards for a Travel Channel
documentary about National Parks along the Colorado River; a Discovery
Channel production profiling youth who have survived hurricanes, floods,
and earthquakes; and several productions created for the Discovery Global
Education Partnership. A product of border crossings, Stefani is Filipina,
Russian, German, English, and Scottish. She feels most comfortable straddling
the boundaries of race, culture, gender, and place.
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Allison
Meyers
Southwest Region Director
Allison’s
undergraduate degrees from Vanderbilt University in Literature and in
Communication, an MA in Humanities/Intercultural Communication, and her
background as an artist, graphic designer, educator, community builder
and a life-long appreciator of story have all served her in this work.
Before working with CDS, Allison most recently taught ESL and Communication
courses in the Maricopa Community College System, and coordinated study
abroad programs in the international education department. Prior to that,
she was part of a team developing and facilitating an international leadership
and service-learning program for young leaders from over 30 countries.
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Canadian
Staff:

Robert
Kershaw
Canadian Projects Director
Rob
is a photographer, designer and writer who has been facilitating digital
storytelling workshops in Canada since 2004. He began working on story
and photography projects with remote Northern communities in the NWT in
2001 and is the author and/or co-editor/co-designer of four books: Exploring
the Castle, Discovering the Backbone of the World in Southwestern Alberta;
Sáhtu Atlas: Maps and Stories from the Sáhtu Settlement
Area in Canada’s Northwest Territories (nominated for The William
Mills Prize for Non-Fiction Polar Books in 2006); If Only We Had Known:
The History of Port Radium as Told by the Sahtúot’ine;
and Field Guide to the Birds of the Mackenzie Delta. Rob is a
graduate of the University of Calgary with a BS in Ecology and Communication
Studies.
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Jennifer
Lafontaine
Toronto Region Director
Jennifer
joined the Center’s staff in 2008, through a partnership with the
Toronto Centre for Community Learning and Development. She originally
came to digital storytelling via her establishment of a community media
project at Toronto's Central Neighbourhood House. This project initially
assisted women in the community in creating black and white photography
exhibits on themes such as violence against women, work, and immigration,
and progressed five years ago to The
Story Project, a digital story effort supporting women’s leadership
through media and technology. Jennifer was born and grew up in Kelowna,
British Columbia and moved east to Toronto to attend York University,
where she received a BA in Environmental Studies. She has lived in Toronto
ever since.
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