2017 Producers Fellows

Jameka Autry

Jameka Autry is a creative producer and 2017-18 Impact Partners Creative Producers Fellow. She produced MARATHON: The Patriots Day Bombing, which premiered on HBO in 2016. She previously co-produced IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE, which premiered at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival and garnered wins for Best Documentary at both the Nashville Film Festival and Geena Davis’ Bentonville Film Festival. Most recently, she was a line producer on MATANGI/MAYA/M.I.A. (Sundance '18) and consulted on Jeremiah Zagar's WE THE ANIMALS (Sundance '18) and LOVE, GILDA (Tribeca '18). She also spent two seasons helming the docu-series The Fashion Fund in collaboration with Conde Nast and Vogue, which aired on Amazon.

Originally from Durham, North Carolina, she attended Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies and currently lives in New York City.

Pulkit Datta

Raised in six countries across four continents, Pulkit’s filmmaking interests are inherently cross-cultural. He started his career assisting award-winning director Mira Nair and has since worked on a wide range of international projects. He has worked on the creative development and production of narrative films, Sundance-backed documentaries, commercials, short films, and multimedia campaigns. His films have screened at festivals such as, Toronto International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and NewFilmmakers New York. JASON, a short film written/directed by Pulkit, won the Reel 13 competition by popular vote and was broadcast on PBS. His new short film, WISHFUL WHISKERS, premiered at Atlanta Film Festival, and is touring festivals. Pulkit has independently produced the feature documentary THE FORGETTING GAME (IndiePix), and is a producer on INVISIBLE, a feature documentary in post-production. Pulkit is an INK Fellow, Impact Partners Producing Fellow, and is also in development on his narrative feature COLONY, which is backed by IFP (USA), NFDC Film Bazaar (India), and Cine Qua Non Lab (Mexico).

Taylor Hom

Taylor Hom is a documentary film producer / writer based in Brooklyn, New York. She has written and produced documentaries and branded content for clients and media outlets such as National Geographic, NYTimes, PBS, CNN, CBS, ITVS, Google, Rolex, and GMC. Her work focuses on topics of social justice and women’s issues. She has filmed in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa and has worked on projects that range from the fight against ISIS in northern Iraq, the black-market pipeline of looted antiquities in the Middle East, and the role of women in the Arab uprisings. A graduate of New York University’s honors program, she studied journalism, political economy, and Arabic. Taylor is currently working on a feature-length documentary about three Yazidi women as they rebuild their lives after ISIS.

Dana Kalmey

Dana is an independent documentary filmmaker who produces, directs, films, and edits. She is trained as an architect, is a lifelong soccer player, a former college soccer coach, and a former architecture teacher with The Green Gecko Project in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Her film roster includes the Sundance award-winning TRAPPED and E-TEAM; and (DIS)HONESTY––THE TRUTH ABOUT LIES, which premiered at Full Frame and Hot Docs Film Festivals and was broadcast on CNBC. Dana is currently directing/producing two sports documentaries, THE LAST 90 MINUTES and TANDEM. She is driven by teamwork, athleticism, humor, and culture, and aims to discover the innate humanity in her projects while making meaningful connections and sharing them with the world.

Lance Kramer

Lance is a documentary filmmaker based in Washington, DC and co-founder of Meridian Hill Pictures with his brother Brandon. Lance produced CITY OF TREES (official selection — 2016 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival) broadcast on the PBS series America ReFramed and currently in educational distribution with Cinema Guild. In collaboration with Van Jones, Lance produced the web series THE MESSY TRUTH (2017 Webby Award nominee). Lance is the co-producer of the feature documentary VOICES FROM WITHIN (2015), associate producer of FLY BY LIGHT (2015), associate field producer of the Kartemquin/Al Jazeera America documentary series HARD EARNED (2015, winner of Alfred I. duPont Award). In 2014, Lance received the DC Mayor’s Arts Award and an Individual Artists Fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Lance served two terms on the Docs in Progress Board of Directors. Lance holds a bachelor’s degree in history and film from Dartmouth College.

Chelsea Matter

Chelsea Matter is an independent documentary producer whose films have screened at Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Full Frame and IDFA and received national distribution through outlets such as RADiUS-TWC, The History Channel, Gravitas Ventures and OWN. She co-produced and line produced the film, BEINGE EVEL, directed by Academy Award-winner Daniel Junge, which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. She also co-produced Junge’s film BEYOND THE BRICK, which premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival and was released through RADiUS-TWC. Prior to this, she produced THE HUMAN EXPERIMENT, directed by Emmy award winning journalists Dana Nachman and Don Hardy and narrated/executive produced by Oscar winner Sean Penn. Her broadcast credits include producing and writing documentary-style television series for networks including Discovery, The History Channel, NatGeo, Travel Channel, Plum TV, A&E and PBS. Chelsea is a graduate of Stanford University and an alumna of the Tribeca Film Institute’s Tribeca All Access program.

Lindsey Megrue

Lindsey Megrue is a producer and director with over a dozen years experience creating documentary films for theatrical release and television broadcast. She has worked on many critically acclaimed programs for PBS, including eight episodes of the award-winning series American Experience. She has directed for the highly rated series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and was a Field Producer for the Emmy-nominated Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies. She co-produced Koch, a documentary about former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, which opened theatrically in 2013 and broadcast on PBS’s POV. Lindsey also creates web content. She has produced work for The New York Times, Retro Report and The Marshall Project. Lindsey is currently producing a feature-length documentary about Syrian refugee resettling in Baltimore. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America and a graduate of Smith College.

Rachel Pikelny

Rachel Pikelny is a Chicago-based filmmaker and the Director of Production at Siskel/Jacobs Productions, where she is currently producing two feature documentaries: No Small Matter, a co-production with Kindling Group about early childhood education; and The Road Up, which centers on The Cara Program and its students as they rebuild their lives and find employment. She is also directing a short film titled Grace about reclaiming control of one’s life and body after surviving breast cancer. Previously, with Kartemquin Films, she produced The Trials of Muhammad Ali (Independent Lens, 2014), which won a national Emmy for Best Historical Long-Form Program; served as co-producer on American Arab (America ReFramed, 2016); and as associate producer on A Good Man (American Masters, 2011). She got her start at Kurtis Productions, where she produced several episodes of the series Cold Case Files for A&E and American Greed for CNBC. Originally from Tampa, she graduated from Northwestern University in 2005 and lives in Oak Park with her husband and two children.

Erik Spink

Erik Spink is a producer at Vacant Light a film and media production company based in New York City. He earned his Bachelors of Arts in Cinema Studies at SUNY Purchase College and an MFA in Social Documentary Film from the School of Visual Arts. Erik’s work in film, television, and digital media has been focused predominately in non-fiction story telling. Additionally, Erik has worked with brands and non-profit organizations creating original moving image projects across all platforms. Erik was the producer of Amitabh Joshi’s feature length documentary film Tashi’s Turbine, which aired on PBS’s WORLD Channel in 2016. Erik serves on the faculty in the MFA for Social Documentary Film department at The School of Visual Arts.

Jeffrey Star

Jeffrey’s work in documentary began as a producer on For the Birds, a verite film that began shooting in 2011, participated in the 2016 IFP Documentary Labs, and is currently in post-production. Along the way, he has worked on other feature documentaries: as Assistant Director and Archival Producer for Pump (directed by Sundance Audience Award-winner Josh Tickell), Associate Producer and Post-Production Coordinator for Voyagers Without Trace (Audience Award, Ashland Independent Film Festival), and Associate Producer for Boone (SXSW, 2016). He received his B.A. in Literature from Yale, where he also shot, directed and edited dozens of film projects. Elsewhere in the film industry, he has also worked as a Production Assistant on Brother Nature (produced by Lorne Michaels) and NBC’s Grimm, and taught video production to middle school and high school students in New Haven, CT and Portland, Oregon. Jeffrey is currently based in New York.

Sam Tabet

Sam Tabet is a Brooklyn based creative producer. Sam produced a short film called Love The Sinner (Tribeca 2017) which explores the Evangelical roots of homophobia in the wake of the Pulse shooting. Sam produced Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four (Tribeca Film Festival, HotDocs, IDFA 2016) which had its television premiere on Investigation Discovery to over five million viewers this fall. The critically acclaimed film helped exonerate the 'San Antonio Four'. From 2010-2014 Sam worked at Chicken & Egg Pictures. During this time Sam was also the assistant producer for award-winning feature documentary Call Me Kuchu (Berlin Film Festival, HotDocs 2012) and produced SIGNIFIED. They previously worked and volunteered at NewFest and American Documentary, POV, and holds a B.A. from Connecticut College in Film and Gender studies. Sam is a founder of the Queer Producers Collective, a Firelight Impact Producer fellow, and a Impact Partners Producing fellow.