ORGANIZER BIOGRAPHIES
Salma Abu Ayyash is a Palestinian born in Jordan. She is co-founder of the Palestinian arts and culture organization Tawassul and is a local Palestinian rights activist. She is an Electrical Engineer by training (MS, Ph.D. ABD). Salma is interested in acting and directing, has been in a couple of small film productions. Salma currently teaches high school math and science and does freelance Arabic-English translations.
Nitin Sawhney, Ph.D. is a Research Affiliate with the Jerusalem 2050 Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also a senior research scientist and Director, Commercialization of Research at Cytel, Inc., a Cambridge-based firm providing analytic software solutions for BioPharma. He was born in New Delhi, India and lived in the Middle East for over 12 years. Nitin received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from MIT, as well as M.S. and B.E. degrees from Georgia Tech. At the MIT Media Lab he conducted research on open source design collaboration, mobile and wearable computing, and digital media interaction. A co-founder of BPFF, he has worked on Palestinian advocacy issues with university campuses, local rights organizations, and national campaigns. Since 2006, he has conducted digital video and storytelling workshops with youth in refugee camps in the West Bank, as part of a nonprofit initiative he founded called Voices Beyond Walls. He also helped establish the international Expressions of Nakba Competition and Exhibit in 2008, working closely with the US Campaign.
Katherine Hanna is a Palestinian-American who has worked for many years in educational, cultural and women's projects about Palestine. She is a co-founder of the Middle East Cultural and Charitable Society, Inc. (MECCS), a past coordinator of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Massachusetts (ADC-MA) and a member of Tawassul. She has previously studied Communications/Political Science (BA), produced video documentaries on immigration issues and taught video production at the University of California, San Diego. Katherine holds an M.S. in Education and is currently a teacher in Cambridge, MA. She is also working on an educational initiative with ADC-MA to produce an anti-biased social studies curriculum about the Middle East for use in Massachusetts public schools.
Emna Ben Salem was born and raised in Tunisia. Emna received her Bachelor degree in International Business management in Tunis and her MBA degree from Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts. Emna has several years of experience in project management, IT strategy consulting and business process redesign in the financial services and pharmaceutical industries in US and Europe. She currently works as Director of project management in a financial company in Boston. Based on her strong belief in the arts and films as genuine vehicles of cultural awareness, social consciousness and human understanding, Emna used her management and organizational skills to help launch this first large-scale Palestinian Film Festival in Boston, hoping to make it - in few years - one of the most prominent events in Boston's cultural scene.
Christine Giraud graduated with her Bachelors from McGill University in Montreal in 1994. From there she lived in Central America, Mexico and Texas working on documentary films like Paulina! (1998 Sundance Audience Award Recipient) and Secrets of the CIA. In 2000 she graduated with her Masters in Communication from the University of Texas at Austin and was subsequently hired to work at the Ford Foundation in New York. At the foundation, she worked on the Media Production Portfolio recommending and distributing grants to filmmakers and media nonprofits. She followed that by working for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Accra, Ghana. In Ghana she was posted as a lecturer with the National Film and Television Institute teaching documentary film. While in this post, she organized the first annual Environmental Film Festival of Accra (www.effaccra.org) with co-director and environmentalist Claudia D'Andrea. The festival was very successful and has continued into its third year. Christine is currently working by day as a Communication Specialist for a nonprofit in Cambridge and by night as an organizer for BPFF.
Donald Veach is a co-founder of the Middle East Cultural and Charitable Society, Inc. (MECCS). MECCS assists in the annual production of the Chicago Palestine Film Festival. In association with Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies' Arab Education Forum, Mr. Veach produced a series of documentary films on site in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. Donald Veach has a substantial background in accounting and finance and has been very active in issues of human and civil rights concentrating on housing and health care issues.
Michael Rainho was born in Boston and grew up in the greater Boston area. He studied writing and film at Emerson College. Among his longtime interests are media aesthetics and criticism, design, philosophy, the ethical treatment of animals and the environment, and human rights. In various capacities, he has been involved for the last several years in supporting Palestine’s struggle for justice. He currently works in Boston for a major book publisher. |
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