Featuring filmmaker Catherine Gund, author and organizer Mahogany Browne and Dr. Douglas E. Wood, Director, Aspen Institute’s Criminal Justice Reform Initiative, moderated by Elliot Gerson, Executive Vice President of the Aspen Institute
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CATHERINE GUND
Founder of Aubin Pictures, Gund is an Emmy-nominated producer, director, writer, and activist. Her media work focuses on strategic and sustainable social transformation, arts and culture, HIV/AIDS and reproductive health, and the environment. Gund’s most recent projects include: Dispatches from Cleveland, a five-chapter documentary that looks at the police murder of 12 year-old Tamir Rice; and Chavela, a documentary about the life of the iconic Latin-American gender-bending diva, Chavela Vargas. her past films include America, Born to Fly, What’s On Your Plate?, A Touch of Greatness, Motherland Afghanistan, Making Grace, On Hostile Ground, and Hallelujah! Ron Athey, which have screened around the world in festivals, theaters, museums, and schools; on PBS the Discovery Channel, Sundance Channel, Netflix, and Amazon.
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ELLIOT GERSON
Elliot Gerson is the executive vice president at the Aspen Institute responsible for its Policy Programs, its Public Programs and its relations with its International Partners. The Institute’s more than 30 Policy Programs focus on both domestic and international issues. They foster candid dialogue among leaders and policy experts, advocate new policy, and have enormous impact on the ground. The Institute’s public programs – including the Aspen Ideas Festival, The Aspen Security Forum, CityLab, and many smaller programs across the country and world – open the Institute’s doors to a broader audience and further both its educational goals and its promotion of ideas to lead to action. The Institute has International Partners based in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Romania, Spain, and Ukraine. Gerson also administers the US Rhodes Scholarships. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a US Supreme Court clerk, practiced law in government and privately, held executive positions in state and federal government and on a presidential campaign, and was president of start-ups in health care and education, and of two leading national insurance and health-care companies. He has served on many non-profit boards, especially in the arts.
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MAHOGANY L. BROWNE
Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, organizer & educator. Executive Director of Bowery Poetry Club & Artistic Director of Urban Word NYC & Poetry Coordinator at St. Francis College. Browne has received fellowships from Agnes Gund, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research & Rauschenberg. She is the author of Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, Woke Baby & Black Girl Magic (Macmillan), Kissing Caskets (Yes Yes Books) & Dear Twitter (Penmanship Books). She is also the founder of the Woke Baby Book Fair (a nationwide diversity literature campaign) & as an Arts for Justice grantee, is excited to release her first YA Novel Chlorine Sky in January 2021. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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DR. DOUGLAS E. WOOD
Dr. Douglas E. Wood is Director of the Aspen Institute’s Criminal Justice Reform Initiative. From 2011-2018, he was a program officer at the Ford Foundation on the Youth Opportunity and Learning team and for nearly two years served as Acting Lead of the foundation’s global Higher Education for Social Justice initiative, managing grants in the U.S., Colombia, Peru, Chile, Southern Africa, Egypt and China. He also funded a myriad of programmatic grants focused on criminal justice reform at the national, state and local levels including investigative journalism, theater and documentary film.
Prior to joining Ford, he was Executive Director and Chief Education Officer of the Tennessee State Board of Education, chair of the Basic Education Program Review Committee that oversees Tennessee’s $3.2 billion K-12 budget, a member of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, a gubernatorial appointee to the Education Commission of the States, a Fellow at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, executive director and principal investigator of the National Academy for Excellent Teaching, Teachers College, Columbia University, and Associate Dean at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School.
Dr. Wood began his career as a public-school teacher and while a graduate student at Harvard, worked as a consultant with the Urban Superintendent’s Program, the World Bank’s Office of East Asian Affairs, and taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Dr. Wood received the 2018 Alumni Council Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and is a board member of the Partnership for College Completion. Dr. Wood holds a B.A. degree in History from Wofford College, a master’s degree in English from Middlebury College, and a master’s and doctoral degree from Harvard University. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and holds the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from Middlebury College.
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ABOUT EISNER/LAUDER NEW VIEWS DOCUMENTARIES AND DIALOGUE SERIES
A program of the Aspen Institute’s Arts Program, the New Views Series features critically acclaimed and thought-provoking documentaries with post screening conversations with filmmakers and special guests. New Views is generously sponsored by Leonard Lauder, and Jane and Michael Eisner.
ABOUT AUBIN PICTURES
Aubin Pictures, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization founded by Catherine Gund, with a mission to create cultural awareness and strategic, sustainable social justice through transformative, community-based production and impactful distribution of media. The work covers a range of topics including: art and culture; racial justice; LGBTQIA issues; reproductive justice; HIV/AIDS; the concept of democracy; and the radical right wing. Our goal is to educate and inspire dialogue on the issues and themes relevant to our times and to foster better understanding among communities .
Featuring filmmaker Catherine Gund, author and organizer Mahogany Browne and Dr. Douglas E. Wood, Director, Aspen Institute’s Criminal Justice Reform Initiative, moderated by Elliot Gerson, Executive Vice President of the Aspen Institute
___________________________________________________________________________________________
CATHERINE GUND
Founder of Aubin Pictures, Gund is an Emmy-nominated producer, director, writer, and activist. Her media work focuses on strategic and sustainable social transformation, arts and culture, HIV/AIDS and reproductive health, and the environment. Gund’s most recent projects include: Dispatches from Cleveland, a five-chapter documentary that looks at the police murder of 12 year-old Tamir Rice; and Chavela, a documentary about the life of the iconic Latin-American gender-bending diva, Chavela Vargas. her past films include America, Born to Fly, What’s On Your Plate?, A Touch of Greatness, Motherland Afghanistan, Making Grace, On Hostile Ground, and Hallelujah! Ron Athey, which have screened around the world in festivals, theaters, museums, and schools; on PBS the Discovery Channel, Sundance Channel, Netflix, and Amazon.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
ELLIOT GERSON
Elliot Gerson is the executive vice president at the Aspen Institute responsible for its Policy Programs, its Public Programs and its relations with its International Partners. The Institute’s more than 30 Policy Programs focus on both domestic and international issues. They foster candid dialogue among leaders and policy experts, advocate new policy, and have enormous impact on the ground. The Institute’s public programs – including the Aspen Ideas Festival, The Aspen Security Forum, CityLab, and many smaller programs across the country and world – open the Institute’s doors to a broader audience and further both its educational goals and its promotion of ideas to lead to action. The Institute has International Partners based in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Romania, Spain, and Ukraine. Gerson also administers the US Rhodes Scholarships. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a US Supreme Court clerk, practiced law in government and privately, held executive positions in state and federal government and on a presidential campaign, and was president of start-ups in health care and education, and of two leading national insurance and health-care companies. He has served on many non-profit boards, especially in the arts.
________________________________________________________________________________
MAHOGANY L. BROWNE
Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, organizer & educator. Executive Director of Bowery Poetry Club & Artistic Director of Urban Word NYC & Poetry Coordinator at St. Francis College. Browne has received fellowships from Agnes Gund, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research & Rauschenberg. She is the author of Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, Woke Baby & Black Girl Magic (Macmillan), Kissing Caskets (Yes Yes Books) & Dear Twitter (Penmanship Books). She is also the founder of the Woke Baby Book Fair (a nationwide diversity literature campaign) & as an Arts for Justice grantee, is excited to release her first YA Novel Chlorine Sky in January 2021. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
DR. DOUGLAS E. WOOD
Dr. Douglas E. Wood is Director of the Aspen Institute’s Criminal Justice Reform Initiative. From 2011-2018, he was a program officer at the Ford Foundation on the Youth Opportunity and Learning team and for nearly two years served as Acting Lead of the foundation’s global Higher Education for Social Justice initiative, managing grants in the U.S., Colombia, Peru, Chile, Southern Africa, Egypt and China. He also funded a myriad of programmatic grants focused on criminal justice reform at the national, state and local levels including investigative journalism, theater and documentary film.
Prior to joining Ford, he was Executive Director and Chief Education Officer of the Tennessee State Board of Education, chair of the Basic Education Program Review Committee that oversees Tennessee’s $3.2 billion K-12 budget, a member of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, a gubernatorial appointee to the Education Commission of the States, a Fellow at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, executive director and principal investigator of the National Academy for Excellent Teaching, Teachers College, Columbia University, and Associate Dean at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School.
Dr. Wood began his career as a public-school teacher and while a graduate student at Harvard, worked as a consultant with the Urban Superintendent’s Program, the World Bank’s Office of East Asian Affairs, and taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Dr. Wood received the 2018 Alumni Council Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and is a board member of the Partnership for College Completion. Dr. Wood holds a B.A. degree in History from Wofford College, a master’s degree in English from Middlebury College, and a master’s and doctoral degree from Harvard University. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and holds the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from Middlebury College.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
ABOUT EISNER/LAUDER NEW VIEWS DOCUMENTARIES AND DIALOGUE SERIES
A program of the Aspen Institute’s Arts Program, the New Views Series features critically acclaimed and thought-provoking documentaries with post screening conversations with filmmakers and special guests. New Views is generously sponsored by Leonard Lauder, and Jane and Michael Eisner.
ABOUT AUBIN PICTURES
Aubin Pictures, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization founded by Catherine Gund, with a mission to create cultural awareness and strategic, sustainable social justice through transformative, community-based production and impactful distribution of media. The work covers a range of topics including: art and culture; racial justice; LGBTQIA issues; reproductive justice; HIV/AIDS; the concept of democracy; and the radical right wing. Our goal is to educate and inspire dialogue on the issues and themes relevant to our times and to foster better understanding among communities .