The Team
Marisa Venegas
Director/Producer/Executive Producer
Marisa Venegas has worked in long-form, non-fiction production for 26 years at the top broadcast networks in the U.S. in both English and Spanish, including NBC News, CBS News, Univision and Telemundo. She is the recipient of an IRE Gold Medal, Gerald Loeb and George Polk Awards. She has 10 nominations and won four News and Documentary Emmy awards for the documentaries Dying to Cross/The Real Death Valley (2014), Harvest of Misery (2016), The Source (2017) and Hidden Costs (2018), all co-productions with The Weather Channel. She has a BA in Medical Anthropology from Barnard College and a Master’s degree in Science and Environmental reporting from NYU. Contact.
Cristina Venegas
Director/Producer/Executive Producer
Cristina Venegas is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. She is the author of Digital Dilemmas: The State, the Individual and Digital Culture in Cuba (2010) a Choice award recipient, and co-editor of Digital Activism, Community Media and Sustainable Communication (2020). She was co-founder of the highly successful Latino CineMedia Festival in Santa Barbara, and its director from 2004-2011; she served as advisor on Errol Flynn's Ghost: Hollywood in Havana (2018) directed by Gaspar Gonzalez, and as segment producer for Enredando Sombras (1998) a documentary celebrating 100 years of cinema in Latin America by Julio García Espinosa. Contact.
Marc Shaffer
Director/Writer/Executive Producer
Marc Shaffer is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and founder of the non-profit production company Inside Out Media in Oakland, California. His latest film, Exposing Muybridge, an NEH-funded documentary on the trailblazing photographer Eadweard Muybridge, received critical acclaim at its world premiere in DOC NYC 2021 and won the Writers Guild of America award for best documentary screenplay in 2022. Marc has traveled throughout the United States, and around the world, directing documentaries on some of the most pressing issues of our time, from environmental threats to corporate corruption, democratic integrity to American healthcare. His films have received three national Emmy nominations, among many other honors, and have been seen on PBS Frontline, National Geographic, CBS, Al Jazeera, online and in movie theaters. Contact.
Melina Zambrano
Producer
Melina Zambrano spent the last 20 years working as a producer at Telemundo Network's news department, where she also contributed to long-form investigative productions. She has five Emmy nominations and in 2013 won the Emmy for Outstanding Coverage of Breaking News: Pope Francis, and a NAMIC (Award for Excellence in Multicultural Marketing in 2007. She has a B.A. in Journalism/Broadcast Communications from Barry University in Miami, FL. Contact.
Carolina Gomez Bernal
Producer
For the past 20 years, Carolina Gomez Bernal has worked as a Colombia-based correspondent and investigative producer for the major Spanish-language networks in the United States. She received a Golden Mike Award from the Radio & Television News Association of Southern California for Best TV Medical and Science Reporting (2013) for the story “Giant Contributions,” which was also nominated for a regional Emmy Award in 2014. She specializes in corporate communications and has a Master of Science degree in Strategic Marketing Management and is a Lecturer in International Press studies at St. Thomas Aquinas University in Bogotá. Contact.
Alejo Perez-Stable Husni
Assistant Producer
Alejo Perez-Stable Husni is a filmmaker based in San Francisco, California. He holds a Masters degree in history from The Johns Hopkins University, with a concentration in Latin America, and believes history and filmmaking are powerful complements in world building and storytelling projects. As the son of physicians who emigrated to the United States from Latin America, and from a family personally affected by Alzheimer’s Disease, Alejo is particularly excited to contribute to this film. Contact.
Craig Strang - Thompson
U.S. Navy Veteran specializing in propulsion and electrical engineering, Craig's career in Information Technology spans over 40 years. His company, EASICOMM, has been offering contract CTO services to South Florida businesses offering systems integrations, in-depth analysis, and a solutions provider SMB sectors such as law, healthcare, and retail since 1997. A Pittsburgh, PA native, Craig is a present-day renaissance man who has acquired profound knowledge and proficiency in many modalities of the tech sector and has also had the pleasure of working professionally as a musician and singer for as many years. Contact.
Chief Technology Officer
Gilberto Rivera Roldán
Director of Photography/Editor
Based in Bogotá, Gilberto Rivera Roldán has more than 28 years of experience as a videographer, DP, and reporter for international news agencies from Europe and North America. He’s been producing documentaries and other non-fiction content for the last 14 years for Univision, Televisión Española (TVE), Reuters, and CNN en Español, among others. He has filmed all of the material in Colombia to date. Contact.