CREATIVE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL MEMBERS
Lisa Ehrlich Rapkin is Co-chair of the Council and an accomplished entertainment industry executive with over 20 years of expertise leading content production, promotion, and direction for film and television. Throughout her career, she has partnered with top networks and emerging brands alike to produce programming reaching millions of viewers worldwide. She brings deep experience leading all aspects of studio and in-field production for high visibility projects from concept through launch. She has produced over 100 hours of top-rated content for The Food Network, NBC, MTV, VH1, ABC, MSNBC, FX, Lifetime and Disney.
As a production consultant, Lisa has been working with organizations as a producer, developer and consultant on film and media projects with an emphasis on social impact initiatives. Advising clients on concept creation, script development, and grassroots fundraising, Lisa is a natural connector with a talent for building strong relationships and for leading, mentoring and empowering teams to bring a creative vision to life. Current projects include Bending the Arc (film project working with PIH on Women’s Alliance initiative driven by film screenings), Caroline’s Wedding (Executive Producer), and Eden (Executive Producer/Producer).
Lisa has served as an adjunct professor in the Department of Media and Communication at SUNY New Paltz where she taught electronic media and studio production. Most recently, Lisa has served as a strategic advisor to Tulane University’s Career Initiative and NYU’s Production Lab Episodic Development Studio. As a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion in the arts, Lisa sits on the Board of Directors of Reel Works Teen Filmmaking in Brooklyn and Tulane University’s Deans Advisory Council in New Orleans. Lisa received her BFA in Film and Television Production from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Stephen Follows is an established data researcher in the film industry whose work has been featured in the New York Times, The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Evening Standard, Newsweek, The New Statesman, AV Club and Indiewire. He acted as an industry consultant and guest on the BBC Radio 4 series The Business of Film, which was topped the iTunes podcast chart, and has consulted for a wide variety of clients, including the Smithsonian in Washington.
Stephen has taught at major film schools, normal business schools and minor primary schools. His lessons range established topics from Producing at MA and BA level, online video and the business of film producing to more adventurous topics such as measuring the unmeasurable, advanced creative thinking and the psychology of film producing. He has taught at the National Film and Television School (NFTS), Met Film School, NYU, Filmbase, and on behalf of the BFI, the BBC and the British Council.
Stephen’s scriptwriting has won Virgin Media Shorts, the Reed Film Competition and IVCA awards; has been nominated at the British Independent Film Awards, Viral Video Awards, LA Movie Awards and long-listed for a BAFTA; and has been championed by Mike Newell, James King, Stephen Fry, the Daily Telegraph and Le Monde. Stephen has produced over 100 short films and two features. He has produced corporate video work for a wide variety of clients ranging from computer game giants (Bethesda), technology giants (Nokia Siemens Networks) and sporting giants (Jonny Wilkinson) but sadly no actual giants. He’s shot people in love, in the air, on the beach and on fire (although not at the same time) across over a dozen different countries in locations ranging from the Circle Line to the Arctic Circle.
Ryan Heller is Vice President, Film and Acquisitions at Topic Studios, the entertainment unit of First Look Media, where he is responsible for overseeing the company’s narrative feature film slate across development, financing, production and distribution as well as seeking out key acquisitions in film (narrative and documentary), television and short form that complement and fortify original studio productions.
Feature films from Topic include Spotlight (2016), Roman J. Israel Esquire (2017) and Leave No Trace (Sundance 2018). Upcoming film projects include The Climb, the debut feature film filmmaking team Michael Covino and Kyle Marvin; The Laundromat from director Steven Soderbergh and starring Meryl Streep, Antonio Banderas and Gary Oldman; On the Other Side starring and produced by Carey Mulligan; and Bastard, the directorial debut of acclaimed cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto from Executive Producer Martin Scorsese.
Ryan was previously at Starz Entertainment where he led the buying and releasing of feature films for the Starz Digital banner including: Amy Berg’s Every Secret Thing starring Diane Lane, Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Banks; Jason Bateman’s The Family Fang starring Bateman, Nicole Kidman and Christopher Walken; Sophie Goodhart’s My Blind Brother starring Adam Scott, Nick Kroll and Jenny Slate; and two-time Academy Award-winning director Barbara Kopple’s Miss Sharon Jones!
Ryan holds a BA from Boston College and is a graduate of New York University’s M.B.A./M.F.A. dual degree program. In a former life, Ryan was a founding member of rock band Aberdeen City. He is based out of First Look Media’s headquarters in New York.
Sasha Levites is an associate in the Entertainment Group at Frankfurt Kurnit, where she represents clients in the film, television, theatre, and publishing industries. Ms. Levites handles a broad range of transactional entertainment and intellectual property matters, with a focus on advising clients in the film, television and digital media industries. She represents writers, directors, producers, documentary filmmakers, motion picture studios, distributors and private equity financiers, and counsels unscripted production companies on their day-to-day production legal needs.
Ms. Levites is experienced in structuring and negotiating film and television development deals, talent agreements, co-production and financing agreements, rights acquisition, content distribution and foreign sales agreements, and all forms of production legal releases.
Prior to joining Frankfurt Kurnit, Ms. Levites served as Manager of Business and Legal Affairs for FilmNation Entertainment where she negotiated international film sales and distribution agreements for award-winning titles such as “Nebraska” and “The Imitation Game”, along with motion picture finance and development deals.
Ms. Levites also spent time in the Business and Legal Affairs department at MTV, where she focused on international content distribution and format licensing for the music networks. Ms. Levites was included in the Up Next List of Variety’s 2017 Dealmaker’s Elite New York Report, and has been recognized in Super Lawyers magazine as a New York-area “Super Lawyer” in the Entertainment & Sports field. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law Indie Film Clinic.
Nicholas Ma is a writer, director and producer based in New York City. Most recently, he produced Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, a documentary on Fred Rogers, directed by Academy Award winner Morgan Neville. He is currently in development on a documentary series on diplomacy. He left McKinsey & Company in 2013, where he led large-scale transformations of public and private entities. Previously, he worked for then-Senator John Kerry, overseeing his global economic portfolio on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is a graduate of Harvard College.
Adri Murguia is an experienced filmmaker, director, producer, development producer, and executive producer with demonstrated success in creating original documentary and nonscripted shortform/ longform content for both digital platforms and TV.
Skilled in documentary filmmaking, IP creation, development, and visual storytelling with strong aesthetic sensibilities, her films have been exhibited around the world, including at CPH:DOX (Copenhagen), Newfest (NYC), Seattle Transmedia & Independent Film Festival (WA), Fringe! Film Festival (London), Somerset House (London), and Ars Film Festival (Austria). Murguia is a strong video production professional with a Bachelor’s Degree focused in Media Studies, Semiotics, and Film Production from New York University, between The Tisch School of the Arts and Steinhardt.
Her work has been recognized by GLAAD and Stonewall, and she currently holds VICE’s most-watched video of all time, with 40 million views on YouTube. She also has experience creating branded content for high-profile clients, including Google, Calvin Klein, Hulu, Intel, Levi’s, Smirnoff, and Budweiser. The first season of Slutever, which Murguia cocreated and executive produced on Viceland, an award-winning channel, debuted last year and has gained notices from The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue magazine, Paper magazine, the Guardian and The New York Post. The second season will be released in March 2019. Murguia speaks 4 languages fluently, has lived in 8 countries, and shot in 5 continents. She currently works and lives in NYC.
Jessica Sharzer made her feature writing and directing debut with SPEAK, starring Kristen Stewart and Steve Zahn. It premiered at Sundance in 2004 and was nominated for a Writers Guild Award and a Directors Guild Award. She has since developed feature films for Universal, HBO, MTV, Fox, Sony and Lionsgate.
She wrote the 2016 feature film NERVE starring Dave Franco and Emma Roberts. She also adapted the novel A SIMPLE FAVOR starring Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively for director Paul Feig. She is currently adapting the graphic novel BAD GIRLS for Netflix and the memoir THE RULES DO NOT APPLY for Participant and director Jill Soloway.
In television, Ms. Sharzer spent four seasons as a writer-producer on AMERICAN HORROR STORY. She has developed drama pilots for CBS, FOX, MTV and ABC networks. She is currently a co-executive producer on Apple’s AMAZING STORIES with drama pilots in development at USA Network and Warner Media. She holds a Masters Degree from NYU where her thesis film THE WORMHOLE won the NYU Wasserman Award, the NY Magazine Award of Excellence and the Student Academy Award. She is also an adjunct professor in the USC Stark Producing program.
Calla Videt is an NYC-based filmmaker and theatermaker. She is the Creative Director of Sightline Arts, a production company committed to creating original, interdisciplinary media and performance work. Calla graduated from Harvard with BA in Physics and Theater and received her MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and her MFA from Tisch Graduate Film. She has received grants and awards from the Puffin Foundation, Tofte Lake Center/Jerome Foundation, Culture Project, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York Women in Film and Television, and Harvard, including the Louis Sudler Prize for the Arts. She was named a Person of the Year by NYTheatre in 2011. Her writing and directing work has been presented at Culture Project, the Living Theatre, HERE, Ice Factory/New Ohio Theatre, Theater for a New City, soloNova, Ars Nova, and Dixon Place. In her work as a producer and strategist, Calla has worked at Complicite, The Public Theater, Lincoln Center, Harvard Medical School, NBC News, DIRECTV, BET Networks, and Turner Broadcasting. She currently works in Strategy and Corporate Development at WarnerMedia.