Our Team

WORKSHOP INSTRUCTORS

Chandler Griffin (Founder & Director)

Chandler is a New York City-based, documentary filmmaker and educator, as well as the Founding Director of Barefoot Workshops. He has more than ten years of experience instructing over fourty film and video workshops, starting out at the prestigious International Film & Television Workshops in Maine. His projects have since taken him to Latin America, North America, the UK, Africa, India and the Middle East. He has developed and produced educational programs in northern Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, South Africa, Honduras, Jordan, Kuwait, Israel, Palestine, Bahrain and various locations in the USA. He is a founding member of Video Volunteers and is on Jackson Hole Film Festival’s Global Insight Advisory Committee. Chandler started The Arnold & Friends Fund (www.TAAFF.org) to fundraise for AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe. He has collaborated with Navsarjan Trust, PLANusa, 1 Giant Leap, PBS, The American Cancer Society, FXB International, The Ford Foundation, RFK Center for Human Rights, Ocean Classroom, FilmAid International, UNESCO, UNAIDS/UNDP, the State Department's Middle East Partnership Initiative and the President's Digital Freedom Initiative. He holds a BFA in Photography and a BFA in Video/Film from the Savannah College of Art & Design.

Alison Fast (Program Director – Africa & The Middle East)

Alison Fast is a Peabody Award-winning television producer who has worked for such networks as NBC/Universal, BBC Worldwide and MTV Networks. She has documented international events including, World AIDS Orphans Day in Los Angeles, the World Water Forum in Mexico City, the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, and the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in New York City. She spent six months documenting the power of grassroots media in Brazil, and speaks Spanish and Portuguese fluently. As Program Director of Barefoot Workshops, she has produced and led educational programs in the United States, South Africa, Burundi, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel, Bahrain and Palestine. Her goal is to use media to bridge diverse communities around the world and to work towards global strategies for peace and a sustainable future. She graduated in 1998 with a degree in Journalism from Boston University College of Communication.

STAFF & CONSULTANTS

Damien Blaylock (Content Producer & Delta Workshop Co-Instructor)

Damien Blaylock is a writer, director, cinematographer and editor of documentary films. Since studying filmmaking at the International Film and Video Workshops in Rockport, Maine, he has gone on to work on a number of commercials, promotional pieces, informative videos and feature-length documentaries including the critically-acclaimed project, "Hard Times", a documentary about the life and music of blues musician, Big George Brock, which Damien directed, co-wrote, shot, and edited. As a cinematographer, Damien has worked on "Messenger's", a human interest piece about a Mississippi business owner, George Messenger and his relationship with his home town, the blues, and the old south; "Super Chikan: A Child Of The Delta", a documentary that delves into the colorful world of Mississippi musician and folk artist, James Super Chikan Johnson; and "Blind Faith", a feature-length documentary about Sharon McConnell, an artist who, as a tribute to blues music, has set out to cast the faces of blues artists throughout the country, while dealing with the inevitable approach of total blindness. Damien continues to procude and direct through his production company, Atavistik Pictures (www.atavistik.com).

Evelyn Coleman (Development Consultant – Africa Programs)

Evelyn worked at Sesame Workshop for more than three years where she managed fundraising efforts for domestic programs, moving up the ranks from Research and Development Assistant to Manager of International Giving. She also managed international projects and co-productions in South Africa and the Middle East, namely Egypt, Jordan, South Africa and Tanzania, and supported the development and analysis of summative research in Bangladesh. Prior to Sesame, Evelyn orchestrated fundraising and special events for Seeds of Peace, and designed educational materials for Amnesty International’s human rights campaigns in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Evelyn served on the steering committee for the founding chapter of Generation Obama in New York. She is currently a member of the Seeds of Peace Young Leadership Committee and is the Young Alumni Chair for the Birmingham Southern College Northeastern Alumni Network. She has her undergraduate degree in Psychology and is now earning her Masters in Social Work from Columbia University in New York City.

Sanaz Alesafar (Development Consultant – The Middle East)

Sanaz earned her B.A. in Political Science from University of California Berkeley and M.A. in Public Affairs from L’Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. She has field experience teaching conflict resolution to Afghan and Iraqi refugee children in Tehran as recently as 2006. She has worked in varying capacities in research and development for Save the Children in UK, where she completed her Master’s Capstone Project on education-based assessment tools to prevent conflict at the local and national level, and Relief International, where she drafted proposals to secure funding from USAID and State Department for the Middle East for micro-credit schemes for women and women’s participation in political processes in Arab States. Most recently she has worked as a Research Assistant at Inspired Philanthropy and Sonja Sohn in Los Angeles. Her areas of focus are: International and Human Security, Risk Assessment and Management in Post-Conflict Recovery, International Negotiations and Scenario Planning. She speaks English, Farsi and French.

Melissa Brough (Research & Assessment Consultant – Africa Programs)

Melissa Brough received her B.A. in Development Studies and Modern Culture & Media from Brown University. She subsequently worked in documentary film production and for FilmAid International, a non-profit organization that uses film and video to promote health and strengthen communities. As Program Officer she supported video-based, psychosocial and educational programs as well as participatory video projects in refugee camps in East Africa, and youth media projects in the Gulf Coast of the U. S. She has volunteered with local and international community media projects including the Chiapas Media Project in Mexico, whose work she helped bring to the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. Melissa is currently working on her PhD at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include participatory media practices for social change; participatory design of mobile platforms; program evaluation; community media and social movements.

Charlotte Lapsansky (Research & Assessment Consultant – Africa Programs)

Charlotte is a PhD candidate at University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication. Her research focuses on evaluation strategies for development communications and communication for social change programs. Previously, she worked in India on the design and evaluation of national media campaigns to address gender inequality, health and HIV. She has also worked on youth leadership development and teacher training in India. Prior to working in India, she served as Program Coordinator for Breakthrough where she implemented programs to promote racial justice and domestic violence advocacy through a number of strategies including national theater tours, education and curriculum development, film and media advocacy. Her current research is on evaluation strategies for community media projects as well as national media campaigns related to gender and health in India, including the BBC World Service Trusts recent national PSA and new media campaign to promote condom use among men in India. She holds a BA in Evolutionary Biology from Brown University.

Daphne Kouretas (Information Consultant)

Daphne is an information professional with expertise in research, evaluation and learning in development projects. As Information & Knowledge Manager at Healthlink Worldwide in London, she provided technical support in information management to Lepra India (funded by the UK‘s Community Fund), and the National Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda (funded by Comic Relief UK), among others, and research support to the World Bank-funded infoDev project. She also managed a 25,000-item resource center and its website, www.asksource.info, in partnership with UCL‘s Centre for International Health and Development and Handicap International. Subsequently, she shaped a new role at the UK‘s major funder of community initiatives, the Big Lottery Fund, advancing the use of evaluation and research in strategic grant-making. With a passion for leveraging information for social change, she uses participatory approaches to help communities and organizations articulate, value and share their knowledge. Daphne holds an MSc in Information Science from City University, London, and a BA from Oberlin College, Ohio, USA.

Tae Sayama (Graphic Design Consultant)

Tae is a Graphic Designer with a background in interactive design, print design, corporate identity design, and illustration. Her focus is in designing online marketing solutions for clients in the pharmaceutical, arts & entertainment, for-profit, and non-profit industries, as well as developing user interface designs for various web-based applications.

Sonal Bains (Marketing Consultant)

Sonal is a Communications professional with five years of progressive advocacy experience and a passion for creating platforms for social justice issues in the mainstream media. Her past work as Vice President of Represent Agency focused on securing media placements on CNN, Larry King Live, C-SPAN, PBS Tavis Smiley, national and regional NPR, PRI and regional Pacifica stations across the country, as well as maintaining strong relationships with bloggers at top news sites such as Wired, Gawker, Talking Points Memo, Huffington Post, Daily Kos and The Atlantic Monthly. Her work also includes developing social media platforms, planning and implementing progressive campaigns and mobilizing broad-based grassroots networks of support for organizations such as Green Corp, Sierra Club and People for the American Way Foundation. Presently she works for Pro-Media Communications in New York City.