ANDREA KALIN
Andrea Kalin, founder of Spark Media, is a celebrated documentary filmmaker whose films have aired on major networks around the globe, screened theatrically to sold-out audiences, and earned more than 85 industry awards, including a Prime Time Emmy, and Golden Globe and WGA nominations. She has worked in over 25 countries, from disaster zones to remote tropical rain forests, crafting gripping human stories for the screen. Andrea specializes in bringing to viewers the emotional front line where lives of courage, perseverance and dignity battle brutal injustices and seemingly insurmountable hardships. Her films include the award-winning docs Partners of the Heart, The Pact, No Evidence of Disease, Red Lines, and First Lady of the Revolution.
KAI JACKSON
Kai has been working as the main co-anchor, with Jennifer Gilbert, for WBFF FOX45 since January of 2015. In December 2013 Kai left WJZ to work at Fox45’s parent company Sinclair Broadcast Group. He spent a year as national correspondent covering accountability and government waste. During that time, he worked at WJLA ABC7 in Arlington, VA. a station, at that time, recently acquired by Sinclair Broadcast Group.
Kai spent 20 years as an anchor, reporter and talk show host at WJZ. While there, with the support of his family, he decided to go back to college. In 2010 he received a Master's Degree in filmmaking from American University and co-founded a film company.
Kai is co-founder of DocYourmentary a film company dedicated to short documentaries, short feature films and corporate videos. Among the stories he produced and filmed was a documentary called ‘Run by Faith’ a story about Gene Roberts a disabled Vietnam Veteran who ran across America.
He is a member of several professional and social organizations Including: The Society of Professional Journalists, The International Documentary Association, The Television Internet Video Association, The National Association of Black Journalists, Former president of the Association of Black Media Workers of Baltimore and former Deputy Director for the NABJ Region III Director.
He’s a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, past Board member of The Maryland Food Bank and Baltimore Reads. Kai and his wife Kia live in Owings Mills, Maryland with their daughters Grace and Peri. They are members of Colonial Baptist Church.
PROFESSOR WILLIAMS
Sonja D. Williams is a professor in the Howard University Department of Media, Journalism and Film in Washington, DC. Williams has served as a journalist and media trainer in Africa, the Caribbean, and throughout America and her radio documentaries have won numerous awards, including three consecutive George Foster Peabody Awards for Significant and Meritorious Achievement. She also is a 2016 Phyllis Wheatley Book Award finalist for her biography, Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom (University of Illinois Press), about pioneering National Radio Hall of Fame broadcast dramatist, journalist and Chicago-based activist Richard Durham. Williams was born in the Bronx, New York and currently lives in Washington, DC.