PATHWAYS

We produce the films that historically shouldn't have gotten made, and then we make sure they get seen. Our filmography is a record of preoccupations — the mental health of immigrants, the assumptions made about sexualized bodies, the incarceration of Black and brown ones, and the way future-casting shows up in present-day life. These are the pitches we often say yes to, informed by Nina’s role as lead producer on both feature and short films, across narrative and documentary format, working alongside co-producers and directors we continue to return to across years and projects. Our approach to production is about building architecture that can sustain and invigorate projects (budget, legal, contract, finance, post, distribution, festival strategy) because that unglamorous scaffolding is the only thing standing between a script and a screening. The work we take on tends to arrive slightly before its moment or land just under the radar. Peripheral is the word we use, and we mean it as a description of where the interesting work lives, and where fresh standards for storytelling might emerge. We keep trying to prove the model wrong. We intend to keep at it.

Selected projects and partners: Sundance Institute (producer, Global Short Film Project, GSMA) · Ashes (dir. Ajay Naidu) · No Me Olvidaré De Ti (dir. Laila Petrone) · The Wannabe (dir. Althea Wasow) · The Blade Runner Phenomenon (dir. Boris Hars-Tschachotin) · Ambiance Man, MOCAtv (dir. Alix Lambert) · Stuart Croft

Organizations come to us with a mission, a mandate, or an imperative. We build the strategy, and then we build the thing. Working closely with clients, we build strategies for how to execute those ideas and stay until they exist in the world. Our standard is that the work gets made rather than bounced around for another two quarters. The value we bring sits at the intersection of the math and the story: as Co-Executive Producer and General Manager of Our Body Politic, Nina ran a $2.7M budget and a team of 23 across a nationally syndicated show reaching 500,000 listeners on 185+ stations, launched its first audio documentary series and a research partnership producing actionable data on American life, and built a guest-host pipeline that brought new expert voices to the mic. That work won a Webby. Both halves of it are the job. We work most closely with organizations’ leadership teams, present for the hard, unlovely stretch where an idea becomes a thing in the world. We also tend to see where attention is moving before the market agrees. From the onset, that has been the approach. In 2007 Nina commissioned original films for mobile phones on behalf of Sundance and coordinated the international technology partners who could deliver them, and was told, repeatedly, that no one would ever want to watch video on a phone.

Selected clients and partners: Our Body Politic (NPR) · Robert Wood Johnson Foundation · Pop Culture Collaborative · Democracy Fund · Dot Connector Studio · Benenson Strategy Group · Sundance Institute · Best Self Media · USC Annenberg School · Hewlett Foundation · Knight Foundation · Maynard Institute for Journalism Education

See who is missing from the room, then build the room. Nina co-founded New American Leaders, still the only organization in the country dedicated to training first- and second- generation immigrants to run for public office—building its brand, identity, and communications from the ground up, securing national coverage including The New York Times, The New Yorker and the Los Angeles Times, expanding candidate training from three states to twelve, and launching the Power and Policy Conference for elected immigrant officials, held annually at the White House until 2016. It now counts more than 900 graduates. In New York City, working inside City Hall as Director of Communications for the Office of Immigrant Affairs under Mayor Bloomberg, Nina spearheaded the effort that made Immigrant Heritage Week a standing municipal commitment by executive order, then produced its inaugural citywide, multi-venue week of programming. Long before it was a stated sector priority, we were working on the infrastructure of who gets to tell the story: supporting the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, founded by the Black owners and editors of the Oakland Tribune, and developing Editor's World at USC Annenberg so a story from Johannesburg could reach a mid-sized American paper from somewhere other than the wire. We read the world through a global lens drawn from lived experience, and we bring it as the premise of a strategy rather than a line item inside one. We are also pragmatic in a way this sector often isn't: mission-driven work burns people, and disproportionately people of color. We build budgets, teams, and timelines that account for it, because an organization that cannot sustain its staff cannot sustain its mandate.

Selected clients and partners: New American Leaders · Office of Immigrant Affairs, Office of the Mayor, City of New York · Maynard Institute for Journalism Education | Maynard Partners · USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism · The Alliance for Children's Rights · Democracy Fund · Robert Wood Johnson Foundation · Doris Duke Foundation · Hewlett Foundation · Pop Culture Collaborative · Starfish Accelerator · Sundance Institute

Founder, operator, board member, first money in — Nina has built companies and helped other people build theirs. Every venture we have touched was, at the time of engagement, either new to market or meaningfully differentiated within it: narrative VR production before it was a thing; escape rooms built with rigorous production value (currently the number one escape room in Los Angeles); modular housing designed against veteran housing insecurity, statewide shortage, and fire-vulnerable geography; co-working built for Black women and their allies, who were not served by the default; an accelerator built to protect the intellectual property of creators of color in an industry that preys on it; brand and design for nonprofits and small companies that had neither the bandwidth nor the playbook. Our range runs from the idea on the napkin to the price structure, the contract, the hiring plan, and the board. We are equally useful when the answer is no: the story has already been told, there is no return here, this risk isn't interesting. We provide a clear read on viability, delivered early, while it is still cheap to hear. The measure we trust is longevity. Nina’s ventures have consistently outlived our day-to-day presence in them, which is the point.

Ventures and roles: Hatch Escapes — Founder · Cassette Systems — Founding Advisory Board · Spensley + Ford — Co-Founder · New American Leaders — Co-Founder; Board Member · Lithic VR — COO · Blackbird House — Operations and Strategy · Starfish Accelerator — Program Co-Director