Who We Are

For the past fifteen years, Shana Dressler has been working as a multimedia producer and photojournalist on projects that have spanned several disciplines and continents while consulting for non-profit arts and media organizations. From 2004 through 2006 Ms. Dressler consulted at the Peabody award winning satellite TV station, Link TV. She has also worked with the Global Peace Initiative of Women Religious and Spiritual Leaders which produced the UNDP Global Youth Leadership Summit and helped to produce The Spirit of Fès, a 17 city US tour of world sacred music. She has traveled to more than 40 countries in the past 20 years and since 2003 she has been spending a month a year in India while working on producing a multimedia exhibition and book on the Ganesh Festival in Mumbai. The project which is entitled, Discovering Ganesh, will be exhibited at several venues in the United States in 2009. Ms. Dressler is a member of the Social Venture Network and has attended numerous conferences in the last two years including the Global Philanthropy Forum, The Harvard Social Enterprise Conference, Accion's Microfinance Conference, and Investors Circle as well as several green related expos.

JILL BLUMING, CREATIVE WIZARD

Since the beginning of her career, Jill has been involved in creating multi-sensory events and experiences through mixed media: graphic design, music and audience participation.

Educated and trained as a graphic and furniture designer, Jill's eclectic background includes careers as a disc jockey and events promoter. She's also an avid dancer, whose love of music and dance bring a certain exuberance to her design work. As a designer, Jill has worked in marketing, advertising and publishing with particular experience in luxury branding and fine arts. She has worked with The O Group, American Showcase, and consumer lifestyle magazines New York, Bon Appétit, W Magazine and Domino. Jill is the recipient of several graphic-design awards, including the 2008 Design Council Honor.

Presently, Jill is focused on using her skills to make a difference in the way people interact and consume art, hoping to help fulfill a promise that by 2050, everyone on the planet experiences the world as a work of art.

Her work in the non-profit sector includes projects for Volunteers of America, The Children's Storefront in Harlem, Empowerment Loop, and the Design Industry Foundation Fighting Aids.

JENNIFER KOHANIM, PUBLIC RELATIONS AND NEW MEDIA COORDINATOR

For the past several years, Jennifer Kohanim has worked for top PR and marketing companies where she assisted on campaigns for brands like Comedy Central, Oxygen, Crackle.com, Canon, and Ikegami. She was instrumental to the successful campaigns launched for artists like Aimee Mann, Suzanne Vega, and Marc Cohn. While pursing a degree at New York University in music business management, Jennifer served as Event Director for the NYU Iranian Jewish Club, organized a variety of cultural events such as Persian ice cream making, belly dancing lessons, documentary screenings, and Persian Sabbath dinners.

ADVISORS:

ANNA STROUT

As Director of Events and Special Projects for not for profit arts education organization Urban Arts Partnership, Anna Strout helps develop and implement curriculum-enriching pilot programs (Master Class Series, The Memoir Project, The 24 Hour Plays in the Schools, Image Writers, Advanced Media Lab Institute) and signature events (The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway, The Urban Arts Festival, and Behind The Scenes). She started with UAP as a teaching artist, working with English Language Learners and students with special needs to create animated music videos based on their history and language arts curriculum and is now working with students in the Media Activist Lab. The students' films have screened at The LA International Film Festival, The Hamptons International Film Festival, The Sprout Festival, The Newport Film Festival, The Future Filmmakers Festival, The New York Independent Film and Video Festival, Human Rights Watch International Youth Producing Change Film Festival, Tribeca's Institute's Our City, My Story and have garnered awards at The Big Bear International Film Festival, The Locomotion International Film Festival, and The Chicago International Children's Film Festival. Over the years, Anna has also lent her skills to numerous socio-historical documentaries broadcast on PBS, The Learning Channel and Court TV; multi-media releases; and museum exhibits at The New York Historical Society, the National Buildings Museum and The Museum of the City of New York.

FABIAN ALSULTANY

A first-generation American of Iraqi and Cuban decent, Fabian Alsultany has spent his life bridging gaps. Dubbed by Billboard Magazine as the "world music impresario," Fabian Alsultany is a producer, entrepreneur, futurist, and dj.

He has produced and guided the creation of countless albums and concerts since the early 1990s, launched the live events division for Putumayo World Music, represented music industry legend Chris Blackwell (Bob Marley/U2) as Director of A&R and Festivals at Palm Pictures, and founded Uprise Management & Productions where he represented a stable of world music stars, branded festivals, and was the talent buyer of legendary nightclub SOB's. As the founder of the GlobeSonic Sound System, a traveling DJ collective that fuses traditional music from the Middle East, India, Latin America, and Africa with modern electronica, he has brought the evolving sounds of global electronica to audiences around the world.

He sits on the board of the United Nations International Day of Peace steering committee and produces the annual Sulha Benefit Concert for Peace in New York that raises funds for peace efforts in the Middle East.

GAURAV SHAH, MD

Gaurav Shah has dedicated his life to giving on two fronts - medicine and music. As a board-certified medical oncologist trained at Harvard and at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, he now serves as a medical director of clinical research for Eli Lilly/ImClone in New York, spending the bulk of his time seeking cures for highly aggressive brain, lung and ovarian cancers. He is also dedicated to bringing common therapies to areas of the world that have uncommon medical needs, with a focus on cancer and infectious disease therapies. On the music front - as an Indian-classically trained professional singer (heavily influenced by contemporary songwriting techniques) Gaurav has also toured and recorded extensively on his own and with Falu. He has appeared at Carnegie Hall, on national FOX TV, National Geographic TV, with academy-award winning film Born Into Brothels Ensemble, and in multiple soundtracks alongside Wyclef Jean in Angelina Jolie's directorial debut A Place in Time. Through his undying passion for music and collaborations with non-profit and charity organizations (AIF, CARE, CRY, AID, SAKHI, SCOJO), he has helped to raise more than $2,000,000 aimed at eradicating illiteracy, disease and poverty in South Asia.

JEANETTE BRONEE, CHHC

Jeanette Bronée, CHHC, is a nourishment counselor, educator and change motivator. Jeanette has developed the Path for Life nine-step system that she teaches to her clients to bring awareness into daily life habits and choices around food and self-care. On this enlightening journey, she guides each client toward finding their own individual way to health through food choices that do not only support and heal the individual but also sustain and support a local and global awareness. Her approach to food, whole health and emotional healing is educational, upbeat and non-dogmatic. But it is not just about food; Jeanette teaches us to be aware of how and why we eat. It is a daily awareness into who we are as human beings and how we live at our fullest. She believes that we need to be active participants in our solutions to health, that we can be a daily part of the change we want to see in the world through our food, lifestyle, and self-care choices.

She is dedicated to being a resource and inspiration for those who are looking for a new way to a healthy and balanced life, for people living with illness, and for those who seek prevention by transitioning from living with "high risk" to living with "high awareness". Being a guide in finding the freedom of leaving behind feeling dis-empowered by our own eating habits to being empowered to practice great self-nourishment everyday. And to help everyone change their relationship to food and self to grown their life.

LESLIE PULE

As a teacher, curriculum writer, photographer and artistic coordinator, for nearly two decades Leslie Pulé has been bringing his love of documentary and narrative film - and his explorations of global cultures - into countless NYC high school classrooms through art and literacy based multi-media projects for almost 20 years. As founder and project director of Global Sharing Matters, a New York based international youth media network, he currently directs teams of volunteer educators running yearly "Sharing Our Stories" multi-media projects with teenage English Language Learners overseas.

LORRAINE HESS

Lorraine Hess is the Director of Program Acquisitions at Link TV, a nationwide, non-commercial satellite TV channel available in 28 million homes that provides Americans with a global perspective on news, issues and culture. Link's programming consists of foreign feature films, outstanding investigative documentaries, news reports from around the world, and the best of world music videos. Lorraine is also a producer for Link TV and is currently developing a new series for the channel called Global Spirit. This thirteen part discussion show will feature documentaries and short segments from documentaries about a variety of themes related to the nature of spirituality and human consciousness, including pilgrimage, alternative health and healing, death and dying, and mysticism among others. Before joining Link TV in 1999, Lorraine worked for nine years as a producer of non-fiction programs and series with an international focus.