Pallavi Somusetty – Filmmaker, Coach Emily

Pallavi Somusetty is a documentary filmmaker whose doc portraits center BIPOC voices in the hope that we feel fully seen in the complexities of our identities and journeys and that meaningful impact can result. She is a series producer for A-Doc and is the director and cinematographer of Coach Emily, about rock climbing coach Emily Taylor and her Brown Girls Climbing team (a 2023 DocLands DocPitch Industry Award Winner). Pallavi is a 2023 Unlock Her Potential mentee, a 2022 Center for Asian American Media fellow, and former Re-Take Oakland film fellow. Pallavi holds a documentary-focused Masters in Journalism from UC Berkeley and a BA in Creative Writing from UC Santa Cruz. In her spare time, she climbs rocks with her kids and supports incarcerated pregnant people as a trained doula.

Emily Taylor – Guest Speaker, Coach Emily

As the owner and professional coach of Taylored Fit Solutions and Brown Girls Climbing, Emily provides personalized coaching, climbing training, and individual training programs for outdoor adventure experiences for under-invested communities throughout the United States. Emily shares her experience and knowledge by consulting schools, gyms, and coaches through her unique Coach Approach workshops and clinics designed to strengthen coaches, teams, programs and individual athletes.

Bryan Wiley – Filmmaker, Wake the Town

Born in Philadelphia, Bryan grew up in a household filled with music and art. At San Francisco State, he developed an interest in photojournalism. His first renowned project, “In Search of African Continuum; Sacred Ceremonies and Rituals,” focused on sacred ceremonies and rituals rooted in West Africa and spread throughout the Diaspora. His uncanny ability to find his way into the cultural inner circle allows viewers an “up close and personal” look at people in their natural settings. Bryan also worked as a stills photographer on the feature film documentary, “Crips and Bloods: Made in America.” The compelling story by director Stacy Peralta examines the conditions of devastating gang violence among young African Americans growing up in South Los Angeles. His work has been featured in Ebony Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, Agence France-Presse, and he was a photo editor at Black Issues In Higher Education and the Children’s Defense Fund magazines. Bryan Wiley is also a Co-Founder of SEEDS, a social and emotional learning organization that works with kids on the spectrum, and he also mentors youth in Oakland.

La’Donna Mitchell – Guest Speaker, Wake the Town

I’m La’Donna Mitchell. I’m from the Bay Area… Born in Berkeley and raised in Oakland. I have birthed 3 seedlings; two girls and one boy. I am a lyricist, homecare provider, and a licensed cosmetologist. I currently reside in Sacramento.

Corinne Manabat Cueva – Filmmaker, Synchronized

Corinne Manabat Cueva is a Filipina American independent media artist and filmmaker dedicated to creating thought-provoking and visually poetic media for social change and empowerment of those outside of mainstream media. She’s also committed to showcasing and preserving nuanced stories from the Asian American diaspora. Corinne completed Synchronized as part of the Re-Take Oakland Fellowship, a two-year public education and filmmaker mentoring program with Re-present Media. Her previous works include Why We Rise, winner of the CAAMFest 2014 Loni Ding Award for Social Issue Documentary and featured on the PBS Online Film Festival, and Excuse My Gangsta Ways.

Clara Merçon – Guest Speaker, Synchronized

Maria Clara Merçon is a multimedia artist and educator from Niterói, Brazil and is based in Long Beach, CA. She explores the political, physical, and emotional concept of immigration by the imagery of water and landscape, and the body through the interplay of multiple media such as video projections, performance, screen printing, fiber arts, and ceramics.

Carmen Wong – Guest Speaker, Synchronized

My superpower lies in intuitive healing, and I find immense joy in building lasting, meaningful connections through self-love and holistic health education. I am trained and certified in various holistic healing and energy medicine modalities, including Reiki, Tibetan Vitality Energy Medicine, Pneumatherapy, Mental Health First Aid, and Eden Energy Medicine. This year, I am working on creating a global holistic healthcare system that unites healers and teachers to foster balance in the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of life. Through the integration of creativity, science, holistic medicine, and modern technology, we aim to collaborate with conscious communities, provide essential resources, and cultivate healthy environments for mental and emotional well-being and development as we continue to evolve.

Jennifer Huang – Filmmaker, This Adventure Called California

In seventeen years of documentary production, Jennifer has been detained in a shipping container in Papua New Guinea, saved from a sinking boat by Filipino urchin fisherpeople, and leapt from a crashing snowmobile in Colorado. But most memorable are the conversations she’s had, with beautiful teens who survived unspeakable violence, thoughtful chefs who are rethinking the food supply, and tireless leaders working against injustice, exploitation, and fear.

Previously, Jennifer also co-produced a PBS series about indigenous people fighting to protect their sacred sites around the world. She has worked as a writer, field producer, and associate producer for independent films for American Masters, PBS, Anonymous Content, the Travel Channel, HGTV, TNT and AZN TV. She recently won the Shifting Voices Film Fund Pitch, the Movies that Matter Impact Pitch, and Berkeley Film Foundation’s Jonathan Logan Elevate Award.

Arnoldo Lopez – Guest Speaker, This Adventure Called California

Arnoldo Lopez is the main protagonist of the film.

Rafael Bautista – Guest Speaker, This Adventure Called California

Rafael Bautista is a subject matter expert on labor trafficking and a graduate of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ first Human Trafficking Leadership Academy. With his expertise and real-life experience, he has helped and supported different organizations across the country and internationally in creating training programs, strategies, videos, and outreach materials for human trafficking awareness. As an active advocate, Mr. Bautista has testified in support of bills that provide better services for survivors of human trafficking. The California Department of Social Services recognized Mr. Bautista as a leader in the fight against human trafficking in California. Mr. Bautista has shared his skills and expertise with his fellow advocates and his fellow survivors, believing that no matter your race, culture, sexuality, or kind of trafficking – labor or sex – all survivors of human trafficking deserve proper support.

Josué Revolorio – Guest Speaker, This Adventure Called California

Josué Revolorio is a Guatemalan immigrant and MI’s Life Skills/Domestic Worker & Day Labor Program Director. He is passionate about providing job opportunities that lead to economic independence, self-esteem & community participation. He joined MI in 2010 and since then has assisted thousands of men and women living and working in the Bay Area, working out of MI’s Berkeley, Richmond & Redwood City offices. He enjoys facilitating connections within immigrant workers & employers but on the side, enjoys reading, hiking around the Bay Area, riding his bike and spending quality time with his 2 children (playing board games, watching movies, or series; and having fun together).

Lucy Saephan – Filmmaker, My Name is Lai

Lucy Saephan is a Mien American filmmaker from Oakland, California. She is an alum of Re-Take Oakland, a two-year mentorship program for emerging filmmakers. Lucy recently completed her debut short documentary film, My Name is Lai, an intimate portrait of her grandmother Lai, a Mien refugee from Laos living in Oakland, California. Lucy’s growing body of work prioritizes the curation and preservation of diverse stories inspired by the communities and people she grew up with and the Mien diaspora.

Jae Saechao – Guest Speaker, My Name is Lai

Nyingv Jae Saechao is an artist, storyteller, community educator and culture worker. They were born and raised on occupied Ohlone lands (East Bay Area) as the first child of Iu Mien + Khmu refugees from the U.S. Secret War, and currently based on Nisenan territory (Sacramento, CA) while calling Laos their motherland. As an intergenerational bridge-builder, artist-apprentice to the ancestors and a word-weaver of divine, diasporic wisdom, Jae’s art/work centers around belonging, culture-keeping + culture-shaping, ancestral healing, and community liberation with emphasis on fat, queer, Indigenous Southeast Asian femme and gender-expansive issues. Through art, poetry, teaching and advocacy, their practice and full breadth of offerings reflect their belief in the power of creativity x culture as direct catalysts for community healing, autonomy and overall social change. Jae’s work is guided by their dreams for a future that sees our collective communities safe, abundant and free.

Jocelyn Tabancay Duffy – Filmmaker, Bayanihan & Resilience

Jocelyn Tabancay Duffy is an environmental journalist and video producer based in Oakland, CA. Her work has been featured on The Guardian, NBC, The Intercept, KALW, and PBS. As someone who grew up in a cabin on a dirt road where wildfires were an annual catastrophe, she knows that climate change impacts the most vulnerable first. As part of her master’s thesis at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, she reported on water shortages in Chile and California. She is currently reporting on environmental justice and plastics.

Penny Baldado – Guest Speaker, Bayanihan & Resilience

Penny Baldado was born and raised in the small town of Davao City, Philippines. They migrated to the Bay Area and have lived here for 20 years. They are the proud owner and operator of Cafe Gabriela, a community hub and foodie destination located in Downtown Oakland, which opened in 2010. The cafe actively supports our community and is named after the honorable Gabriela Silang, a Filipina revolutionary who led a revolt against Spanish colonizers on the archipelago. Passionate about food and social justice, they created this intentional space that can embrace all of their experiences as transmasculine/queer person of color, a formerly undocumented immigrant, and as a person of working class background, as well as provide a safe, welcoming space for their workers, customers and friends. They made a 7 minute autobiographical documentary My Beautiful Resistance narrating all these identities.

A.K. Sandhu – Filmmaker, Alive in Bronze

A.K. is a filmmaker who directs, produces, and now writes films about female protagonists, the immigrant experience, and new perspectives on history. Probing themes such as race, class, spirituality, and cross-cultural solidarity, she tells stories to bridge the gap between our perceived differences and cultivate a deeper understanding of human connections. Her debut award-winning film, ALIVE IN BRONZE: Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) screened at festivals like Tribeca, PanAfrican, Mill Valley and beyond before being acquired by MTV Documentaries/Paramount+. A.K. has been awarded the Emerging Artist Award in the State of California and was the winner of SeriesFest ‘Spotlight Your Town’ Pitch competition by NatGeo and Visible. She was selected as part of the inaugural cohorts for DOC NYC/VC’s Storytelling Incubator and for Re-Take Oakland film fellowship for emerging BIPOC filmmakers.

She is currently in development for a mix of documentary and narrative projects and a docu-series that reveals the neglected stories of women and children of the Black Panther Party and their ongoing work to redefine our cultural narrative through the arts. A.K. has earned degrees from Columbia University and U.C. Berkeley, and is an active member of A-Doc, Brown Girls Doc Mafia, CineFemme, D-Word and Collective of Documentary Women Cinematographers. She speaks English, Punjabi, and Hindi/Urdu.

Fredrika Newton – Guest Speaker, Alive in Bronze

Fredrika Newton is the President and Co-Founder of the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation and the widow of Dr. Huey P. Newton. In 1995, she co-founded the foundation to preserve and promulgate the history, ideals and legacy of the Black Panther Party. Through that mission and under Fredrika’s stewardship, the Foundation developed multiple programs and events, as well as maintained and exhibited historical archives.

Most recently, the Foundation has instituted its new public history vision. In February 2021, Fredrika had a street renamed for Huey, Dr. Huey P Newton Way, in West Oakland. For the 55th Anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, on October 24, 2021, a bronze sculpture of Huey was unveiled on that street near where he took his last breath. Under her leadership, the Foundation is also working with the National Park Service to create a monument for the Party that will include a museum, a larger memorial art piece and visitor center. In 2022, Fredrika announced the launch of the Dr Huey P. Newton Center for Research & Action in downtown Oakland. Fredrika received her B.A. degree in Sociology at Wesleyan University and her RN degree at College of the Redwoods. Website: hueypnewton.org

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Jay Gash – Filmmaker, When the Garden Comes

Jay Gash (she/they) is a Black & Queer filmmaker, 3rd generation photographer, creative, and educator born and raised in Oakland, CA. Jay was a filmmaker in the inaugural Re-Take Oakland cohort from 2019 – 2021, an education and documentary filmmaker mentoring program, where she started producing her short documentary film, ‘When the Garden Comes’ – which premiered at the 18th Annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival in 2022. Jay contributes significantly to QWOCMAP’s Critical Juncture program for an intergenerational cohort of 21 LBTQIA+ and Black/African Descent filmmakers in the Bay Area.

Creasie Jordan – Guest Speaker, When the Garden Comes

Creasie Joran is Jay’s mother.

Joshua Alperin – Guest Speaker, When the Garden Comes

Joshua Alperin has been working in libraries throughout the Bay Area for over 25 years. He now heads the Melrose Branch of the Oakland Public Library. Joshua is an avid gardener and takes great pleasure in stewarding the garden at the Melrose Library. Outside of work, Joshua loves to play music and spend time with his family.

Chinwe Oniah – Filmmaker, Why More Black Americans Should Try Capoeira

Jenn is a writer and film producer who focuses on underrepresented stories. She has engaged in gender-balancing work in the academic, nonprofit, and film worlds. In academia, she received funding from The Asia Institute and Social Science Research Council for her ethnographic research on migrant women in China and Silicon Valley. Her films include the award-winning LGBTQ+ short documentary, Faithful (2017); Long Haul (2018), another award-winning story of reconciliation between a son and his gay dad; Jane and Emma (2018), a narrative feature that earned a ReFrame stamp as a gender-balanced film; and Bomberos (2019), a hybrid documentary on young firefighters set in Nicaragua currently in post-production.

Contra Mestra Andrea – Guest Speaker, Why More Black Americans Should Try Capoeira

Contra Mestra Andrea is the current leader of the Fica Oakland. She was born in Belo Horizonte (BH) in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. She began practicing capoeira in 1992 with Mestre Primo of Grupo Luna in BH. In 1994, she joined GCAP following Mestre Silvinho since she had him as her reference in Capoeira Angola and since then, she had been training with Mestre Silvinho em Belo Horizonte. Mestre Jurandir was the leader of the GCAP group at that time. She supported FICA in BH through her participation in conferences, encounters and workshops with various Mestres from Brazil.

In 2003, she was given the title of Treinel by Mestres Cobra Mansa, Jurandir and Valmir, and in the same year moved to Oakland to train and to teach with the group. She has since traveled to teach workshops in other FICA groups in the U.S. with her 2 sons. She was given the title of Contra Mestre at the FICA International Conference in 2011 in Salvador, Bahia. In March 2022, Fica Oakland celebrated her 30 year anniversary in Capoeira Angola.