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THE TEAM

Meet the team that brought BIRTHING JUSTICE to life.

Allyson Felix

Executive Producer

Allyson Felix reigns as the most decorated American Track & Field Olympian of all time after winning her bronze and gold medals at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics—her fifth and final Olympic games. Felix closes this chapter of her life with a mind-blowing, 27 global medals at the Olympics and World Championships and titles as both a World Record Holder and a Master’s World Record Holder. This year marks her last season, in which she has dedicated to fellow women athletes, especially mothers.

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Allyson Felix

Executive Producer

Allyson Felix reigns as the most decorated American Track & Field Olympian of all time after winning her bronze and gold medals at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics—her fifth and final Olympic games. Felix closes this chapter of her life with a mind-blowing, 27 global medals at the Olympics and World Championships and titles as both a World Record Holder and a Master’s World Record Holder. This year marks her last season, in which she has dedicated to fellow women athletes, especially mothers.

 

Felix continued to make history in Tokyo, by sporting racing spikes created by her company—lifestyle brand, Saysh—becoming the first athlete to race in their own spike. Launched post-Games in June 2021, Saysh not only aims to create an encouraging and supportive community for women, but it also designs and manufactures athletic-inspired footwear made for and by women, unlike most brands, whose shoes are created based off of men’s feet and footwear. Running in her own spikes on the largest stage in the world, Felix exemplified that she is about more than just medals—she was running for change, equity and acceptance for women and girls everywhere. In keeping with its mission to empower and serve women, Saysh sought out women-led, women-funded partners for the brand’s recent Series A fundraising round, which brought in $8 million and was led by the Gap Inc.–owned Athleta brand.

 

Off the track, Felix is a fierce advocate for maternity rights for all women. In 2019, she wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times that called out Nike, her former sponsor, for not providing guaranteed protections for pregnant athletes and new moms. (Felix gave birth to her daughter Camryn in 2018.) The public reaction to the piece put pregnancy discrimination in athletics in the spotlight, and the practice was heavily criticized. More female athletes came to Felix’s side, offering up their stories. During the 2020 Olympics, Felix alongside her new sponsor Athleta, created the Power of She Fund: Child Care Grant, a fund to assist mom-athletes with childcare while competing at the Games.

 

Felix has always been passionate about children and serves as a member of the Right To Play board, hoping to raise awareness for underserved children in developing regions.

 

Felix currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

Jacoba Atlas

Executive Producer & Co-writer

Jacoba Atlas is an award-winning documentarian and broadcast executive. Her extensive list of credits includes an Emmy and a Peabody for her work in projects like “Survivors of the Holocaust,” executive produced by Steven Spielberg. She directed, wrote and executive produced “PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools” with Women in the Room Productions.

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Jacoba Atlas

Executive Producer & Writer

Jacoba Atlas is an award-winning documentarian and broadcast executive. Her extensive list of credits includes an Emmy and a Peabody for her work in projects like “Survivors of the Holocaust,” executive produced by Steven Spielberg. She directed, wrote and executive produced “PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools” with Women in the Room Productions. 


Her other well-known projects include “Dying to Tell the Story,” which was shortlisted for an Oscar, and profiles of extraordinary women for OWN, hosted by Julia Roberts. She has written, produced and directed seven prime-time PBS documentaries, including: “Too Important to Fail,” which details the education crisis facing Black boys; “A Call to Conscience,” a deconstruction of Martin Luther King Jr.’s pivotal Vietnam Speech; and “Conducting a Life,” a profile of conductor Gustavo Dudamel. From 2000 to 2006, she was head of national content for PBS. For the Turner networks, she wrote and produced the six-part Emmy nominated landmark series “A Century of Women” about the history of American women in the 20th century. The series research and complete interviews are archived at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University. Atlas began her career at NBC News.

BLACK BIRTH MATTERS. BLACK BIRTH MATTERS. BLACK BIRTH MATTERS. BLACK BIRTH MATTERS.

Denise Pines

Executive Producer & Co-writer

CEO, author, speaker, filmmaker and health advocate, Pines is a media pioneer, award-winning marketer, serial entrepreneur, and community health advocate. She serve more than 14 years as a creative consultant for talk television and radio shows (PBS/NPR) and 11 social justice documentaries. As co-founder of Women in the Room Productions, she is committed to diversity in front and behind the screen.

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Denise Pines

Executive Producer

CEO, author, speaker, filmmaker and health advocate, Pines is a media pioneer, award-winning marketer, serial entrepreneur, and community health advocate.  She serve more than 14 years as a creative consultant for talk television and radio shows (PBS/NPR) and 11 social justice documentaries. As co-founder of Women in the Room Productions, she is committed to diversity in front and behind the screen.

 

She is a life-long champion of Women’s Global Health and a past president of the Medical Board of California. She also serves on the Boards of the Federation of State Medical Boards, Osteopathic Medical Board of California and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Medical Center in South Los Angeles.  Pines is the founder of WisePause Wellness Summit to educate and empower women on how to manage peri- and menopause and maintain overall wellness.

Monique N. Matthews

Director and Co-Writer

Monique N. Matthews is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker. She began her career as an entertainment journalist, and later managing editor for a national hip hop publication, before transitioning to film. Hailing from Harlem, New York, Monique has received numerous accolades including selection by Daily Variety as one of its “10 Writers To Watch,” and serving as a lab fellow for writing and directing in Film Independent’s Writing and Directing Labs. She was also recently nominated for a NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Feature Writing in 2022.

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Monique N. Matthews

Director

Monique N. Matthews is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker. She began her career as an entertainment journalist, and later managing editor for a national hip hop publication, before transitioning to film. Hailing from Harlem, New York, Monique has received numerous accolades including selection by Daily Variety as one of its “10 Writers To Watch,” and serving as a lab fellow for writing and directing in Film Independent’s Writing and Directing Labs. She was also recently nominated for a NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Feature Writing in 2022.

 

A three-time UCLA graduate, including an MFA in Film, Television and Digital Media and an MA in African American Studies, Monique is also member of the Writers Guild of America, The Writers Guild of Canada, and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated. She has also taught at multiple colleges including California State Los Angeles, Los Angeles City College and Santa Monica College, where she taught screenwriting and film theory. Monique’s most recent work is BIRTHING JUSTICE, which she directed and co-wrote.

Lia Dosik Carney

Supervising Producer

Lia Dosik Carney, a production executive in the television industry for almost 20 years, is currently a partner at Topspin Content.

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Lia Dosik Carney

Supervising Producer

Lia Dosik Carney, a production executive in the television industry for almost 20 years, is currently a partner at Topspin Content. She previously served as senior vice president of production and operations at Discovery Studios. In that capacity, Carney oversaw all in-house production teams from the development stage through post-production and managed all core and freelance staff. She has been responsible for strategic business planning, studio operations and production management. Prior to joining Discovery Studios, Carney worked as a freelance producer for the History Channel, TNT, CNN, TLC, the Discovery Channel and PBS.

Sasheen Artis

Producer

Sasheen R. Artis is a two-time Emmy winning producer & Founder of Plenty of Pie, a curriculum-based talent incubator and production accelerator for content creators of color. Sasheen has over 25 years of experience producing documentaries, late night television, and live events, including a Prince concert and two national book tours that garnered two New York Times Bestsellers. Sasheen chaired the Producers Guild of America Power of Diversity Master Workshop for four years and was invited by HRH Princess Rym Ali and the Royal Film Commission to lead a week-long seminar for creatives in Amman, Jordan. Named a Wayfinder Foundation Fellow in 2019, Sasheen produced a webinar for creatives “Ground Zero: Narratives on Homelessness” to help change the depiction of the homeless in media.

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Sasheen Artis

Producer

Sasheen R. Artis is a two-time Emmy winning producer & Founder of Plenty of Pie, a curriculum-based talent incubator and production accelerator for content creators of color. Sasheen has over 25 years of experience producing documentaries, late night television, and live events, including a Prince concert and two national book tours that garnered two New York Times Bestsellers. Sasheen chaired the Producers Guild of America Power of Diversity Master Workshop for four years and was invited by HRH Princess Rym Ali and the Royal Film Commission to lead a week-long seminar for creatives in Amman, Jordan. Named a Wayfinder Foundation Fellow in 2019, Sasheen produced a webinar for creatives “Ground Zero: Narratives on Homelessness” to help change the depiction of the homeless in media.

 

Getting her start in Marketing & Creative Services at Paramount Home Entertainment, Sasheen worked on blockbuster campaigns for Titanic, Mission: Impossible, Braveheart and TV series like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Nickelodeon’s Rugrats. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the Producers Guild of America, and Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. Sasheen is originally from New York City and earned her BA in Psychology from Stanford University.

Naomi Ranz-Schleifer

Co-Producer

Naomi Ranz-Schleifer is a film producer and consultant who engages audiences through compelling storytelling, film and other creative media. Recently she worked on projects for HBO, Netflix, Discovery, PBS and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She actively serves on the boards of nonprofit organizations and community efforts dedicated to engaging individuals of all ages in critical conversations for social change.

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Naomi Ranz-Schleifer

Co-Producer

Naomi Ranz-Schleifer is a film producer and consultant who engages audiences through compelling storytelling, film and other creative media. Recently she worked on projects for HBO, Netflix, Discovery, PBS and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She actively serves on the boards of nonprofit organizations and community efforts dedicated to engaging individuals of all ages in critical conversations for social change.

 

Ranz-Schleifer has a masters of public health, in health behavior and health education, from the University of Michigan, and degrees in international studies and biology from Johns Hopkins University.

Sam Citron

ACE, Editor

Sam Citron graduated from Boston University where his 16mm comedy short film Routine was selected for the permanent archive and is screened annually for introductory film classes. Moving to Los Angeles after graduation, Sam landed assistant film editing jobs with Academy Award–winning film editor Anne V. Coates and Academy Award nominee C. Timothy O’Meara. After working as first assistant film editor on two of his films, Academy Award–nominated writer-director John Milius hired Sam to edit his Emmy-winning miniseries Rough Riders.

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Sam Citron

ACE, Editor

Sam Citron graduated from Boston University where his 16mm comedy short film Routine was selected for the permanent archive and is screened annually for introductory film classes. Moving to Los Angeles after graduation, Sam landed assistant film editing jobs with Academy Award–winning film editor Anne V. Coates and Academy Award nominee C. Timothy O’Meara. After working as first assistant film editor on two of his films, Academy Award–nominated writer-director John Milius hired Sam to edit his Emmy-winning miniseries Rough Riders.

 

Academy Award–winning documentary director Davis Guggenheim hired Sam to edit on the feature documentary The First Year, a winner of the Peabody Award, and then brought Sam in to do additional editing on Waiting for “Superman”, shortlisted for the Academy Awards and named Critic’s Choice and National Board of Review best feature-length documentary. Guggenheim also hired Sam to story produce, edit and write President Obama’s voiceover for the Stewart family segment of American Stories, short films that were included in the president’s infomercial during the 2008 campaign. Guggenheim hired Sam again in 2012 to edit on President Obama’s re-election campaign film The Road We’ve Traveled, which was screened at the Democratic National Convention.

 

Multi-Emmy–winning sports documentarian Jonathan Hock hired Sam to edit the American Film Institute (AFI) Film Festival Audience Award–winning feature documentary Through the Fire as well as the Emmy-nominated The Streak. For ESPN’s Emmy-winning “30 for 30” documentary series, Hock hired Sam to do additional editing on Survive and Advance. More recently, Sam completed editing on Hock’s Emmy-nominated ESPN “30 for 30” Celtics/Lakers: Best of Enemies.

 

Sam has also edited several feature-length comedies, including the country/western music mockumentary Dill Scallion, a Slamdance Film Festival Jury Prize nominee and a standout at the SXSW Film Festival where The Austin Herald American review recognized Sam’s “…expert editing.” Sam also edited the Los Angeles Film Festival Audience Award–winning hybrid comedy documentary Last Man Running about real-life actor Rick Gomez and his premarital foray into the world of demolition derbies. Critics embraced it, writing, “…seems to always cut on the right beat…an energetic panoply of color and black and white images…funny, seamlessly told and a great piece of entertainment for anyone interested in new experiences.”

 

Sam produced and directed the comedy short In Transition, which was selected for the USA Comedy Shorts Program at the American Film Institute (AFI) International Film Festival. Although not accepted to the Sundance Film Festival, then–festival programmer (now emeritus festival director) John Cooper wrote on the notification letter, “I feel compelled to tell you how much I enjoyed your film. It was a breath of fresh air when it came on the screen—keep up the good work.”

 

Sam also directed the Emmy-nominated sports documentary Champions in Kentucky about the Breeders’ Cup Championship for NBC, which the Daily Racing Forum called “one of the finest racing films we’ve ever seen.”

 

Sam teamed with acclaimed writer-director Maria Giese on her dogma-style update and feature film adaption of Nobel Prize winner Knute Hamsun’s renowned novel Hunger, which Sam edited and executive produced. One reviewer admired “the lovely pacing,” while another proclaimed, “…the bracing austerity of the film…charging it with all the primitive beauty of an ancient Russian icon painting.” This modern presentation of Hunger brought great pride to Hamsun’s native Norway when it screened in Olso.

 

The feature documentary Tough Bond about the disintegration of village life in rural Kenya and the subsequent urban populations of homeless children addicted to sniffing glue, which Sam edited and is an executive producer on, premiered in the competition at the Berlin International Film Festival and then went on to compete at Hot Docs and the Chicago International Film Festival. At that same time, the feature documentary The Other Shore, about marathon swimmer Dyana Nyad and her attempts to swim from Cuba to Florida, which Sam edited on, premiered at the SXSW Film Festival and played on Showtime. More recently, Sam was nominated for an Emmy for editing on the Showtime documentary series Shut up and Dribble. He followed that up with editing on the Peabody Award–winning and Emmy-nominated Lifetime documentary series Surviving R. Kelly. For Surviving R. Kelly, Sam was nominated for an American Cinema Editors (ACE) Eddie award. Following that, Sam received a special invitation to join ACE.

Nathalie Karouni

Editor

Born in Paris and raised in Barcelona, Nathalie Karouni grew up in a very multicultural environment, which brought her to live and work all across Europe.

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Nathalie Karouni

Editor

Born in Paris and raised in Barcelona, Nathalie Karouni grew up in a very multicultural environment, which brought her to live and work all across Europe.

Surrounded from a young age by family and friends with interests in culture, art and photography, Nathalie had a clear vision to pursue a career in some capacity within the audiovisual world. After finding her passion in video editing at 18, she moved to LA in 2011 and worked her way up for years in all postproduction capacities, until finding her true passion, documentary editing. She has since then worked on a number of projects, which include content for Anthony Bourdain, the Chivas soccer team, and doc series for Netflix, Amazon and Vice.

Clare Major

Director of Photography

Clare Major is a cinematographer and documentary filmmaker based in Oakland, California, who specializes in handheld observational camerawork and in stories that illuminate the intersection of cultures and the lives of women and girls.

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Clare Major

Director of Photography

Clare Major is a cinematographer and documentary filmmaker based in Oakland, California, who specializes in handheld observational camerawork and in stories that illuminate the intersection of cultures and the lives of women and girls.

 

Clare’s work has played at festivals around the world and appeared on HBO, PBS, the Discovery Channel, Netflix and the New York Times. Her recent documentary work includes roles as cinematographer on Belly of the Beast (Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2020; Peabody Award Nominee 2021; Emmy winner 2021), which exposes a pattern of illegal sterilizations in California women’s prisons; cinematographer for the short documentary Holding Moses (SFFILM Festival 2022), which tells the raw and emotional parenthood journey of Randi, a queer, non-binary dancer, and Moses, her disabled son; cinematographer on The Ants & the Grasshopper (Mountainfilm & Sheffield DocFest 2021), which follows a Malawian farmer activist who travels around the US to convince Americans that climate change is real; vérité cinematographer on Ahead of the Curve (Frameline 2020), which tells the story of Curve Magazine and its founder’s push for lesbian visibility; and director of photography for We Are the Radical Monarchs (SXSW 2019), which follows a group of young girls of color on the front lines of social justice in Oakland, California.

 

Born and raised in Louisiana, Clare graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with degrees in American studies, Plan II, and radio-TV-film and earned a Master of Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. Her thesis film, the short documentary Feast & Sacrifice, was a Student Academy Awards national finalist and won First Place Documentary at the 2011 College Television Awards.

 

Clare served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal and has walked all the way from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail.

 

In 2020, she was named one of DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40” filmmakers to watch.

Chris Meyers

Associate Editor

Chris Meyers grew up in rural Ohio, where his passions included skateboarding and playing music. He traveled the country for a decade playing in bands, even traveled with the Vans Warped Tour.

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Chris Meyers

Associate Editor

Chris Meyers grew up in rural Ohio, where his passions included skateboarding and playing music. He traveled the country for a decade playing in bands, even traveled with the Vans Warped Tour. He moved to Los Angeles in 2014 and quickly began working in the industry composing, producing and editing for TV shows including Deadliest Catch, Bering Sea Gold, Storage Wars and Ax Men. Chris is married and a father of two. He is looking forward to new opportunities and continued growth in this industry.

BLACK BIRTH MATTERS. BLACK BIRTH MATTERS. BLACK BIRTH MATTERS. BLACK BIRTH MATTERS.

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FILM CREDITS

Executive Producers

Allyson Felix,
Jacoba Atlas &
Denise Pines

DIRECTOR

Monique N. Mathews

CO-Producers

Naomi Ranz-Schleifer & Sasheen Artis

SUPERVISING PRODUCER

Lia Dosik Carney

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Clare Major

WRITTEN BY

Jacoba Atlas & Monique N. Mathews​

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