ELLEN BENAVIDES

Ellen Benavides balances her career as an independent consultant with making social issue documentaries and designing/ building custom cremation urns.

Formerly the Director of Health Policy for Hennepin County, she was responsible for developing the County’s health policy agenda, as well as for designing and implementing county-based health reform efforts to improve access to health care for the uninsured. Ms. Benavides holds a Masters in Hospital and Health Care Administration from the University of Minnesota and a B.A. in Physiological Psychology from Carleton College. 

Current films include “Minnesota Confidential,” a documentary about the potential repeal of the Minors’ Access to Health Care Act of 1971. Other films include “Healthy Moms and Babies,” an educational video about Somali childbirth, “The Sisterhood,” a documentary about Jewish women who play Mah Jongg and “Shoes,” a series of conversations with Canadian islanders about their relationship with their shoes.

CATHERINE L. COON

Most recently Coon has opened her own production company called Ramshead Productions. Her current project is a women's outdoor adventure television pilot. Prior to forming Ramshead she worked with Aquaries Media as a business advisor and consultant. She was also a member of the board of directors. Her business skills were gained while she was the CEO of Kadon Corporation, a plastics manufacturing company which specializes in large returnable packing and shipping containers and pallets. Coon's five year tenure at Kadon resulted in a 500% growth in the companies value.

Prior to her years at Kadon, Coon spent 15 years as an outdoor Educator and Wilderness Guide. During her years as Director of Vertical Pursuits Rock Climbing School she expanded the schools teaching into areas of corporate team building, conflict resolution, trust building and communications skills.

Coon graduated from Northland College with a BS in Biology/English. After several years of working with juvenile Delinquents in the wilderness she returned to college at the University of Minnesota, Duluth for a life science teaching degree and Masters in Education.

REBECCA GILGEN, MSW

Rebecca Gilgen is a Senior Planning Analyst with the Strategic Initiatives and Community Engagement department of Hennepin County.  This department works to partner with communities to support and develop innovative practices that strengthen the education and development of young people in Hennepin County.  Rebecca is an organizer, facilitator and capacity builder in the Far North Minneapolis and Brooklyn Center communities.  Professionally her work is committed to the goal of ensuring that all youth in Hennepin County graduate from highschool.

Rebecca finished her Master of Social Work in community organizing and advocacy in May of 2005.  Prior to this she was a resident of Madison WI.  Where she completed her degree in Sociology; minor in sociology of sport, and Women’s studies.

Rebecca has been an athlete, mentor and coach her entire life.  Rebecca has coached at Cooper Highschool in Robbinsdale Minnesota, Boxing at Uppercut Gym and has mentored many young people throughout her life. 

Other affiliations include:

Member of Top Trainer Network

Official Member, Coach and Judge for USA Boxing

Board member for The Arizona Project.

ABIGAIL ISRAEL

Abby Israel was born and raised just outside of Minneapolis and has had a life-long connection to the arts.  Frequently traveling and visiting museums with her mom and grandmother, she was influenced to pursue Art History and French studies, and graduated with a double major from Hamline University in St Paul. 

Abby began working at the Walker Art Center in the Visitor Services department just before the grand re-opening in 2005. She divides her time between working at the Walker box office and running the building-wide scheduling database.  One of her most exciting experiences came while studying abroad in Cannes, France in 2004 when she was able to attend several screenings at that year's Festival du Film. 


 Outside of work, Abby feels an affinity with anything gold or horse-related and enjoys spending her free-time with her "boys": a Dalmatian named Bugsy and an Arabian horse, Peenut.  In what time is left, she trains in classical dressage and squeezes in film screenings and dance performances both at the Walker and beyond. 

LYNNE LARSEN

A fun, frank, open, honest and creative woman, Larsen is continually involved in the lives of seniors, juniors and small children which gives her an overview of life lived fully in its many aspects and circumstances.

Larsen is a Family Support and Child Care Management Coach and has been a Child Protection Caseworker with Ramsey County Department of Social Services. Her past experiences include the Program Director for the Institute for Cultural Affairs in Brussels, Belgium, Independent Personal Growth Coach in The Netherlands, Personal Assistant and Co-Presenter with Dr. Jean Houston, Psychologist, Theologian and Author. Larsen has extended training in family dynamics and system processes with Virginia Satir and worked as a program facilitator and trainer with the Women's State Prison in Rockwell City, Iowa.

Larsen is a committed member of the One Voice Mixed Chorus and has served as a Board Member and the Volunteer 5th Section Chair.

JAMIE A. LEE

Jamie A. Lee currently owns visionaries filmworks, a film/video production company dedicated to progressive media to change how we look at the world (www.visionariesfilmworks.com).  She attended the University of Wisconsin and has been working in the film/video industry since 1991, moving from TV commercial production to long-format educational and marketing pieces for the fashion industry, to executive producing the Twin Cities MDA Labor Day Telethon to social justice documentary filmmaking and owning her own production company to make these things happen. 

agua miel: secrets of the agave (www.aguamiel-documentary.com) is Lee’s fourth documentary feature, which recently received a grant to film in March 2007 along the U.S/Mexico border.  agua miel: secrets of the agave is a documentary film project that focuses on creative collaborations as practices of resistance to globalization's injustices and inequities along this border. agua miel is about how the imagined and the real come together in this space between two powerful nations. It's about reclaiming the funds of knowledge that reside and inform this space. agua miel: secrets of the agave is a film about sustaining community, hope, imagination, and the lived knowledges within each of us.  

Lee's first film, Treading Water: a documentary, about the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) communities of rural northern Minnesota, was awarded Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature Documentary by an Emerging Filmmaker at the 2002 Minneapolis/St. Paul Int’l Film Festival and has broadcast on PBS affiliates throughout the Midwest. Her second film, THIS obedience (www.thisobedience.com), about the ‘extra-ordinary’ ordination of a lesbian pastor and the fallout in the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), was awarded the Audience Award for Best Feature Documentary at the 2003 Central Standard Film Festival and is currently being distributed through American Public Television. Her third, Green Green Water (www.greengreenwater.com), about the Cree Nations in northern Manitoba who are organizing to fight the construction of large-scale hydroelectric dams on their lands while reclaiming their traditional ways of life, recently premiered at the 2006 imagineNATIVE Film Festival in Toronto, Ontario, Planet In Focus International Environmental Film Festival in Toronto, Ontario, and the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco, California. 

www.VisionariesFilmworks.com

ELIZABETH MILLARD

Elizabeth Millard is a freelance journalist who has written for Ms. Magazine, Business Week, Entrepreneur, and the Boston Globe. She has also covered the arts scene in Minneapolis for publications like Metro and the Onion.

Millard earned a BA in Liberals Arts from Harvard and worked for several years as the Senior Editor of an online business publication for the consulting firm Monitor in Boston. She moved back to Minneapolis in 2001 to be close to her family and began freelance writing.

When she's not devising new ways to spoil her already impossible dog, she enjoys absurd outings such as salmon fishing. She volunteers teaching citizenship classes and a book club in a men's prison and enjoys working with Habitat for Humanity, recently traveling to Honduras to work on a Habitat Project.

DAN OROZCO

After graduating from NYU (BFA – Film & TV) and then from the DGA’s Assistant Director Program in Hollywood, CA - Dan Orozco moved back to his native Minnesota in 2000.  Since then he has worked on feature films and commercials as a producer and assistant director. 

Orozco continues to labor writing and directing his own short films. He is energized and quick to make collaborations between film projects, helping to grow the Minnesota film industry and keep the momentum of creative storytelling moving. In Orozco's off time he host's IFP's Cinema Lounge at Braynt Lake Bowl Theater every month, showing local short films and being a crowd pleaser with his jokes.