Jesse Williams

A native of Chicago and graduate of Temple University, Jesse Williams began his professional career teaching high school in low income Philadelphia public charter schools. From there he moved to New York City and, after working at a law firm, began his professional acting career, performing off-Broadway at The Cherry Lane Theatre under the direction of award-winning playwright Edward Albee in “The Sandbox.”

This year, Williams enters his 8th season as Dr. Jackson Avery in ABC’s hit series Grey’s Anatomy and is also senior producer and correspondent for the upcoming EPIX docuseries America Divided w Norman Lear. He next stars in the thrilling feature Jacob’s Ladder, distributed by Universal and executive produced the documentary Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement, which premiered this summer. His feature credits also include “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” “The Cabin in the Woods,” “Brooklyn’s Finest,” and “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2” as well as the acclaimed western short “They Die By Dawn.”

Williams is founder of the production company, farWord Inc. and the executive producer of “Question Bridge: Black Males,” a series of transmedia art installations, films, curriculum and website (QuestionBridge.com). The exhibition was an official selection of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival New Frontiers and continues to be exhibited in museums nationwide, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Williams is co-founder of the Ebroji mobile app, a curated GIF keyboard and partner in Scholly, a leading scholarship mobile app, while also co-hosting Open Run, one of itunes‘ top sports podcasts, he co-owns with Lebron James’ Uninterrupted Network.

Williams earned the 2016 BET Humanitarian Award as a champion of civil rights. He also sits on the Board of Directors of Advancement Project, a leading national civil rights advocacy organization and Harry Belafonte’s arts and social justice organization Sankofa.org.

Rebecca Teitel

A producer, writer and director with more than a decade of television and documentary experience, Rebecca specializes in investigative reporting on race, politics and national a airs. Her work has aired on a variety of major television networks including NBC, ABC, MSNBC, Discovery and the National Geographic Channel. Her most recent documentary, Hate in America, a partnership between NBC, Discovery and the Southern Poverty Law Center, investigated the complex roots of hate crimes in the United States. Rebecca’s previous projects include two Rachel Maddow documentaries that revealed new information regarding the U.S. government’s private deliberations prior to the invasion of Iraq: Why We Did It and Hubris: Selling the Iraq War,which was MSNBC’s highest-rated documentary in a decade. During the 2012 presidential election, she developed and produced We Decide: Latinos and the 2012 Election, a live town hall with NBC News’ Natalie Morales. Rebecca also contributed reporting to The New York Times’ award-winning investigative series Breakdown: Death and Disarray at America’s Racetracks, which exposed corruption in the horse racing industry and led to racing reforms.

Brent Miller

Brent has been working with Norman Lear for nearly a decade as a television, movie and event producer. He launched his career with Lear by producing the Declare Yourself Unofficial Presidential Inaugural Ball in 2009– cited by many as “the best event at the Inauguration” –  while simultaneously premiering their short film/music video, Born Again American.  He is the creator and executive producer of the docu-series, Tait Stages (AXS TV, 2013), and has recently produced his first feature film, Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You (Music Box, 2016) —- which had its world premiere at the opening night of the Sundance Film Festival.  Currently, he is co-executive producer of the new highly anticipated scripted series One Day at A Time (NETFLIX, 2017), starring Justina Machado and Rita Moreno.  Miller serves as Head of Production and Development for Lear’s ACT III Productions.

Justin Wilkes

Justin Wilkes, President of Media & Entertainment for RadicalMedia, is the Executive Producer of the upcoming, Hamilton’s America for PBS, about Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony®, Grammy®, and Pulitzer Prize®-winning Broadway phenomenon and the Nat Geo six-part global mini-series event, MARS, with partners Ron Howard and Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment.

Under his leadership and seventeen-year history with RadicalMedia, Wilkes has helped push the art of storytelling across multiple forms of media – film, TV and digital platforms – and has been the recipient of numerous accolades including an Academy Award nomination, Grammy nomination, Peabody Award, multiple NAACP Image awards, Cannes Lions and most recently, two Primetime Emmy Awards.

Recent Executive Producer/Producer credits include: the Oscar® and Grammy®, nominated and Emmy®-winning Nina Simone documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone? and the critically acclaimed Keith Richards documentary, Keith Richards: Under The Influence, both for Netflix; the Oscar® and Emmy®-nominated documentary, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory for HBO; the Emmy Award®-winning Paul Simon/Graceland documentary, Under African Skies for A&E Films; the Jay Z/Ron Howard documentary, Made In America for Showtime; ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary about sports legend, Bo Jackson, You Don’t Know Bo and the recent Doc & Darryl; five seasons of the Emmy®-nominated OWN series, Oprah’s Master Class; six seasons of Iconoclasts for the Sundance Channel; David Blaine: Real or Magic for ABC; the Emmy®-winning AOL series, Park Bench with Steve Buscemi; Hello World! and Telescope for Discovery Channel.

Dave O’Connor

In addition to his management responsibilities, O’Connor executive produces and produces multiple ongoing projects, including the feature documentaries: Tony Robbins: Not Your Guru and Under the Influence: Keith Richards for Netflix; Whitey: The United States of America vs. James J. Bulger for CNN Films and Magnolia Pictures; and Hank: Five Years From the Brink for Netflix and Bloomberg BusinessWeek. O’Connor also produced David Blaine: Real or Magic a primetime special for ABC, and the films Doc and Darryl and You Don’t Know Bo for ESPN’s Emmy and Peabody Award-winning 30 for 30 series.

He is currently executive producing the 6-part global television event MARS with Imagine Entertainment’s Ron Howard and Brian Grazer for National Geographic Channel, America Divided a 5-part documentary series on the income inequality gap in America with fellow executive producers Common, Norman Lear and Shonda Rhimes for EPIX, and showrunning an 8-part documentary series for Netflix.

Prior to joining RadicalMedia, O’Connor was Co-Executive Producer and Vice President of Production at Embassy Row, a NYC-based global format and production company. While there, O’Connor developed and co-produced the critically acclaimed documentary The Tillman Story, the groundbreaking The Official 2010 FIFA World Cup Film in 3D and co-created and launched Men In Blazers now on NBC Sports along with reality series and gameshows for several cable networks.

O’Connor began his career at ESPN, where among other things, he worked with a team of producers and programmers on ESPNʼs World Series of Poker, using new production techniques to turn a stale and underperforming property into a ratings phenomenon that endures more than a decade after its relaunch.

O’Connor holds a MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business and his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware. He lives in Brooklyn with his daughter Ava and his son Otis and loves games in all forms, woodworking, surfing and being a dad.

Jon Kamen

Founding Chairman and CEO Jon Kamen’s artistic vision has solidified RadicalMedia’s position as one of the leading generators of premium content, distributed worldwide in nearly every medium possible, including television, film, graphic and interactive design.

Under his leadership, RadicalMedia has created and produced numerous acclaimed projects such as the Academy Award-winning The Fog of War; the Academy- and Emmy Award-nominated Paradise Lost documentaries for HBO; and the Academy-nominated and Emmy-winning Netflix documentary What Happened, Miss Simone?. Recent series include MARS, the National Geographic six-part global miniseries event and Netflix’s eight-part docuseries, Abstract: The Art of Design, which just had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

Kamen, a recipient of the Smithsonian’s National Design Award and Mayor Bloomberg’s “Made in NY” Award, sits on the board of trustees for Rhode Island School of Design, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Museum of the Moving Image, Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, and Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy.

Although Radical has offices in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Shanghai, Kamen chooses to live in NYC and is proud to be a longtime partner of Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Richard Rowley

Richard is an Academy Award nominated director and Sundance Film Festival winning cinematographer with 19 years experience producing, directing, and 23 shooting for screen and television. His most recent documentary feature, Dirty Wars, pioneered a fusion of non-fiction reportage and dramatic narrative storytelling that won him dozens of festival awards and an Academy nomination. His four other theatrically released documentary features have been honored at scores of festivals around the world, from Berlin to Sundance. Richard has directed, produced and filmed dozens of television documentaries for Channel 4, BBC, Canal +, ZDF, ARD, CBC, PBS, CNN International, Al Jazeera and others. Recently, he was lead cinematographer for the Showtime climate change series, Years of Living Dangerously. He has been awarded Sundance, Rockefeller and Jerome Fellowships, and his work has been displayed at MoMa and the Berlin Biennial.

Lucian Read

Lucian is an award-winning producer, cinematographer and conflict photographer, whose work  has engaged with many of the most important international and domestic issues and events for more than a decade. Before co-creating America Divided, he was co-producer and principal cinematographer for the 2014 Emmy-winning climate change documentary series, Years of Living Dangerously. Previously, he directed the Occupy Wall Street feature documentary 99%, — an official 2013 Sundance selection . He was awarded the 2015 Emmy for an investigation of deaths on the US-Mexico border.His work as a producer for the news magazine program Dan Rather Reports from the Afghan War was nominated for an Emmy in 2010. His photojournalism work during the Iraq and Afghan Wars for publications such as Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Newsweek and Time garnered a World Press Photo Award in 2006. A collection of his work—including The Battle of Fallujah—is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia. His work as a producer for the newsmagazine program Dan Rather Reports from the Afghan War was nominated for an Emmy in 2010. Other recent cinematography credits include the documentary series VICE on HBO, The Fourth Estate, Deadliest Catch, and Death Row Stories, and the feature documentaries Time to Choose, City of Joel, and Be Right Back: Maurizio Cattelan.

 

 

Additional Producers

Jon Kamen (The Fog of War, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory), Justin Wilkes (What Happened, Miss Simone?, Under African Skies) and Dave O’Connor (Whitey: The United States of America v. James J. Bulger, You Don’t Know Bo).

Nicole Dow and Derek Dudley (Freedom Road Productions), and Brent Miller (Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You) are co-executive producers.

Solly Granatstein, Lucian Read and Richard Rowley also serve as directors.

Rebecca Teitel and Jesse Williams (Senior Producer, Farword Films) are senior producers.

Abby Ellis and Leah Natasha Thomas are producers. Mark S. Greenberg, Jocelyn Diaz, Ross Bernard and Jill Burkhart are executive producers for EPIX.