Workplace filmmaker and design researcher, Elena has made it her mission to help people find meaning in their work through stories that matter. With the motto “you cannot be what you cannot see” Elena started filming jobs as a way to get young people excited about careers. Since then, her team at Skill Scout has since built a world class media company. Their films have helped clients like Nike, McDonalds, and American Airlines engage candidates and employees alike. Elena's particularly excited about Skill Scout's latest project, the Humans@Work documentary and virtual film festival series that shares stories of people who find passion and meaning in their work.

Elena was recently named HR Superhero by DisruptHR Chicago and Newcity's Film 50 of 2020. She is also the co-founder of Mezcla Media Collective, a a thriving community based Chicagoland non-profit that elevates femme identifying filmmakers of color.

Kathleen is a multimedia journalist specializing in health and science storytelling. After getting her master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 2016, she started covering health research across the city for the Chicago Institute for Translational Medicine, where she’s directing a feature documentary about rare disease. She’s also a freelance journalist published in NBC, Outside magazine, Travel + Leisure, Byrdie, Chicago Reader, and more.

Besides having spent most of 2020 bingeing documentaries for fun, Kathleen is also a huge believer in the power of video journalism to shed light on underrepresented experiences. She’s excited to help support Chicago’s impact film community as a member of CMP’s Associate Board.

Aisha Allen is a filmmaker, writer, and Founder of Reel Mamas Chicago.She graduated from Fisk University with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Dramatics and Speech and completed her MFA in Cinema Directing at Columbia College Chicago. She has written and directed several short films which include her award-winning short film Bump)ED (2014). In May of 2018, she started Reel Mamas Chicago, LLC a Digital Media Company/ Online Magazine dedicated to empowering and inspiring women filmmakers. The online magazine features the latest interviews, film reviews, articles, and essays about women working behind the camera. RMC has covered film festivals around the country including the Chicago International Film Festival, SXSW, and Sundance. Aisha recently graduated from Kartemquin Films and Community Film Workshop’s Diverse Voices in Documentary Fellowship where she worked on developing her first feature documentary “The Cost of Time.”

David Sokol is a lover of documentaries and a believer that a good story can be a powerful driver of change. When he isn’t consuming media and helping parent two young kids, he’s a lawyer at Harrison Street, an investment management firm focused on alternative real assets, where he sits on the Diversity & Inclusion and Sustainability committees. Prior to joining Harrison Street, David was an associate at Cleary Gottlieb in New York; he misses a good bagel dearly.

Katie Prentiss Onsager is a Chicago-based documentary filmmaker and video journalist with Picture Show Films. As the Executive Producer of Small Forces, she has led the production of more than 40 documentary shorts about grassroots activists and organizations across the country.

Sydney is a Chicagoland area native and a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She currently works full-time as the Client Success Manager with Storybolt, a company that uses documentary films to curate programming around DEI for their clients. Outside of that position, she also freelances as a documentary filmmaker, focusing on impact campaigns and in 2018 was a Member of the Obama Foundation’s Community Leadership Corps. She's an avid reader and podcast listener and can frequently be found at a concert venue.