Producer/Director Karen Hayes holds an M.F.A. in Film/TV Production from UCLA. She was a fellow of Tribeca All Access program and AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women. Hayes' production company, Ubuntu Motion Pictures, is devoted to telling stories that promote equity, justice and healing. She wrote, produced, and directed the short, AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL. Based on the autobiography of Harriet Jacobs it is the story of a Black woman forced to choose between freedom of body and spirit. It screened at the Pan-African Film and other festivals nationally. Hayes was granted unique access to film Desmond Tutu internationally over a 15-year period and is completing the documentary, THE FOOLISHNESS OF GOD: A FORGIVENESS JOURNEY WITH DESMOND TUTU. This film explores whether forgiveness and justice can co-exist. Hayes is also in post-production on the documentary, A BETTER WAY: JAMES LAWSON, ARCHITECT OF NONVIOLENCE, about a key strategist of 1960s justice campaigns who advised Martin Luther King and trained the late Rep. John Lewis and other students for success in the Nashville Sit-in Campaign.

Adisa Septuri is an award-winning director, producer, and philanthropist dedicated to impactful storytelling. A Netflix Directors on the Rise alum, his debut feature, Skin in the Game, won Best Director at the Pan African Film Festival and received critical acclaim.
An NYU Tisch MFA graduate, Adisa has had two films showcased on Showtime, winning the Outfest Audience Award and Best Short Film at the San Francisco Black Film Festival. His documentary work includes A Day Without Mines, which exposed child labor in Sierra Leone’s diamond mines and won Best Short Documentary at the Beverly Hills Film Festival and was showcased on PBS.
His latest documentary, ifine (beauty), tackles skin bleaching in Sierra Leone and was nominated for an Africa Movie Academy Award, an NAACP Image Award and was in consideration for the 2024 Oscars. The film gained international recognition, earning Adisa an invitation to speak at UNESCO’s DCMET symposium in 2023.
A 2022 Academy Nicholl’s Fellowship semifinalist for his screenplay Black Ivory, Adisa continues to craft compelling narratives. His Sports and Arts Academy for underprivileged youth in Sierra Leone is set to open in 2026, solidifying his commitment to both film and philanthropy.
Director's Website: Adisafilms.com

Jennifer MacArthur is a filmmaker exploring the impact of our changing climate through the intersection of documentary and genre film. “Family Tree” is her directorial debut.
Previously, Jennifer produced the critically acclaimed feature documentary “Whose Streets?,” which premiered on DAY ONE of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and sold to Magnolia Pictures. She has also produced for TIME Studios, Soledad O’Brien Productions, and Anonymous Content. She is a 2018 IFP Cannes Producers Network Fellow and 2016 Sundance Creative Producing Summit Fellow and a member of the board of directors for Storyline Media, an award-winning multi-platform, participatory, and interactive storytelling company.
Jennifer is a recognized expert in media engagement, a 2015 Creative Change Leader, and a 2015 Rockwood JustFilms Fellow. Over a ten-year period, she helped define the field with impact campaigns for “Traces of the Trade” (POV, 2008) and “Gideon’s Army” (HBO, 2013); engagement strategy for the ITVS social TV platform OVEE; and thought leadership for Doc Society’s “Impact Field Guide” and The Center for Investigative Reporting’s “Impact Tracker,” among others. Her work also took her to Amsterdam, Melbourne, and Guadalajara for keynotes addressing systemic racism, big data, and low-fi transmedia.
Doc Society selected Jennifer for its inaugural Impact Producers Retreat in 2012. With Brenda Coughlin, producer of the Academy Award-winning documentary thriller CITZENFOUR (HBO, 2014), Jennifer established the peer support network Impact Producers Group. They also launched Impact Socials, a networking event for creative change-makers. Jennifer’s commitment to artist development kept her active on the festival circuit as an industry delegate, a Lab Leader for IFP Labs, and an advisor for Sundance Labs, Tribeca New Media, and the Mozilla Foundation.
Jennifer is a graduate of The New School’s film program in New York City. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Krystal Tingle is a Jamaican-American, award-winning director and producer living between Los Angeles and her hometown of Miami, Florida. She is known for her work on the Emmy Award-winning and Critics Choice Award-winning The 1619 Project. Her film Over The Wall, premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and won the Audience Award for Best Documentary Short at the BlackStar Film Festival. She is a 2024 Fellow for The Gotham/HBO Documentary Films' Documentary Development Initiative, a 2024 PGA Create Lab Alum and a New Orleans Film Society Southern Producers Lab alum. Tingle's films explore themes of faith, joy, womanhood, and the rich complexities of humanity across the African and Caribbean diaspora. She has documented stories across the continent and Caribbean including Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Kenya and Jamaica. Most recently she served as Senior Producer on Netflix's With Love, Meghan. Her next documentary short "Sunshine and Sandy" is an elegy about sisterhood filmed in St. Mary, Jamaica.

Laurens Grant is a three-time Emmy and Peabody award-winning documentary filmmaker and former Sundance Institute fellow. Grant premiered three documentary films as a producer at the prestigious Sundance international film festival. She is also a voting member of both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences [Oscars] and the Television Academy [Emmys].
Grant has worked with multiple networks including MGM+, WBD/MAX, PBS, Showtime, CNN, BET, and Smithsonian Ch. Grant’s documentary film topics include cultural, historical and sports themes through a humanistic and social justice lens.
Grant recently worked with Director Justin Simien (Haunted Mansion; Dear White People) as Co-Executive Producer on the 2025 Spirit Award winning docuseries Hollywood Black [Amazon] about African American film pioneers who shaped Hollywood.
Grant is a writer on Secrets of the Dead: The Civil War’s Lost Massacre [PBS] about a group of citizen sleuths trying to solve a 100-year-old mystery: the burial site of an African American battalion of troops who were massacred during the Civil War by a band of Confederate rebels.
Grant is Director, Executive Producer and Showrunner of the documentary For All Humankind (MAX) about the dichotomy of the space billionaires launching rockets into space during an era of increasing George Floyd-type police killings. Trevor Noah [The Daily Show] is Executive Producer.
Grant is the director, producer and writer of both documentary films Black In Space: Breaking the Color Barrier [Smithsonian Channel] about the Cold War race to send the world’s first Black man to space as well as the final hour of the groundbreaking docuseries Future of Work [PBS] about workers grappling with the seismic changes in the working world.
Grant is also the director and producer of the Emmy winning documentary Jesse Owens [PBS] about the four-time Olympian who defied Hitler’s Aryan ideals.