Picture This

Jenny Deller is a filmmaker and designer who loves helping fellow creators take the first step in launching their visions. Crafted to immerse viewers in story and tone, her pitch decks have assisted award-winning film, television and commercial creators land work for Warner Brothers, HBOMax, Showtime, AppleTV+, TNT and USA Networks; as well as national brands like Toyota, Cox, Amazon and Home Depot. Her debut feature as writer-director, FUTURE WEATHER, stars Amy Madigan, Lili Taylor, Marin Ireland and Perla Haney-Jardine. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was distributed worldwide. While in development, FUTURE WEATHER received the Showtime Tony Cox Award for Screenwriting and three grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for its unique exploration of climate change. Most recently, she produced the independent thriller, CLAIRE IN MOTION (SXSW) starring Betsy Brandt and co-directed by Annie Howell and Lisa Robinson. Her work has been supported by Film Independent, The Gotham, Netflix, Women in Film and The Wexner Center. Fun fact: she once played a Russian moll on an episode of LAW & ORDER.

As a filmmaker and media producer with experience in academia and nonprofits, Cassandra Nicholson is dedicated to creating meaningful, high-quality content that serves as both an educational tool and a community service. Cassandra is a writer, producer, and director. She wrote the short film “Dark Dignity” and also wrote and directed “I Could Today” and “The Will of Zenia.” Cassandra is also Director of Partnerships and Outreach at ShotDeck. ShotDeck is the largest library of fully searchable high-definition movie images in the world, a great resource for those who study, analyze, and create visual storytelling, from filmmakers and film students to designers and cinematographers seeking inspiration and reference material.

Emmy Award winning producer and director Amy Oden currently directs the video team at the Human Rights Campaign, where she produces and supervises the production of video content advocating for the LGBTQ+ community. Her recent project “Daniel Really Suits You” was admitted to Sundance’s BrandStorytelling slate in 2025, as well as Tribeca X. Her latest independent short, “The World According to Pussy Noir”, supported by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, is in the festival circuit, and her other recent short, “Lipstick and Leather”, is distributed by PBS’s Reel South. Amy also served as a senior producer and manager of multiplatform strategy at PBS’s Maryland Public Television for seven years, where she shed light on a variety of social and scientific topics, including the Baltimore uprising, fracking, mass incarceration, and the opioid crisis. Her work has been aired nationally on PBS, and she has been fiscally sponsored by the International Documentary Association, as well as granted fellowship in the Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund at Johns Hopkins. Amy holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Maryland, and an MA in Gender and Media from George Washington University. Her work has won Communicator, Emmy, Davey, and W3 Awards.

Olivia Kuan began her career in her early years at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has excelled as a cinematographer ever since. To date, she has shot over 30 narrative feature films. Her work can be seen at oliviakuan.com. Olivia’s recent years have been filled with new adventures. She directed her first scripted film that sold to Lifetime in 2022. She produced and directed her own documentary project, The Herricanes, which won the audience award at SXSW in 2023 and is now available on Amazon and Apple. Now, she is currently developing new projects including a scripted film about the first woman sportscaster to break the locker room barrier and a documentary about one resilient family in the Marshall Islands.

As a “Third Culture Kid” who grew up in 8 countries by the age of 16, world building is in Tchaiko Omawale‘s DNA. It’s how she made herself safe in a changing landscape, incorporating the magical folklore and beauty of the unique cultures around her into her narrative, constantly finding the universal in the specific. Filmmaking allows her to recreate the tension, thrill, and adrenaline of her childhood for her audiences. In Tchaiko’s filmmaking, her characters struggle to find who they are and where they fit in the world. Her award winning debut feature film SOLACE, about a Black girl navigating an eating disorder, is streaming on Kweli TV, MGM + and Prime. She won the 2024 Creative Capital Award for her dark fantasy project BEAST. Her episodic credits include Queen Sugar, Cherish The Day, Good Trouble, Sacrifice, and Black Mafia Family. She also directs branded content.