CHRISTOF BOVE is an award-winning producer and director. For nine years he was a Vice President of Development at the USA Network and the Syfy Channel.  Of his 20 produced projects while there, his film 23 Days of Fear won an NAACP Image Award for best movie. 

While still an executive, he directed the award-winning documentary Deep Springs: A Desert Education.  In 2014, Netflix purchased his feature doc Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show. 

Creator and showrunner of the series EAT. RACE. WIN. for Amazon Prime, he won a 2019 Daytime Emmy after receiving two nominations, including Best Culinary Program.

He is a graduate of Deep Springs College, Cornell University, and California Institute of the Arts. He attended the Sorbonne’s prestigious Centre Parisien d’Etudes Critiques, and was a DAAD scholar at the Hochshule der Künste in Berlin.

He is currently writing a memoir about a solo, transcontinental bike ride from San Francisco to New York.

KIRK ELLIS won two Emmys, a WGA Award, a Peabody and the Humanitas Prize for his work as writer and co-executive producer on the HBO miniseries “John Adams.” The miniseries won a record breaking 13 Emmys in total, as well as four Golden Globe awards.  Previously, Ellis received an Emmy nomination and won the WGA Award and Humanitas Prize for the ABC miniseries “Anne Frank,” which he has served as writer and producer have garnered more than 50 Emmy nominations.

Ellis recently wrapped production as executive producer (with Richard Plepler and Tony Krantz) on an eight-part Apple TV miniseries based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “A Great Improvisation” by Stacy Schiff. Starring Michael Douglas as Franklin, the series chronicles Benjamin Franklin’s efforts to negotiate a treaty with France at the height of the American Revolution.

With Fremantle TV and Israel-based Abot Hameiri, Ellis also serves as showrunner for “Bibi,” a dramatic series based on the life of Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ellis lives in Santa Fe and Palm Springs with his wife, Sheila. His first book, Ride Lonesome, was published in March 2023 by the University of New Mexico Press. He is currently at work on a second book, due out in Spring 2025.

Dr. JOELY PROUDFIT (Luiseño name Payómkawichum) is a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Mission Indians.  Having been tenured by the California State University system three times, Dr. Proudfit is the founding director of the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center. 

In 2016 she was appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Advisory Council on Indian Education.  In 2021 California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed her to the Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. 

Dr. Proudfit is president of Native Media Strategies.  She collaborates and consults to develop inclusive strategies for fostering authentic representation of Native Americans. Her partners include BBC, PBS, Nat Geo, ABC/Disney, Netflix, and others. Recent credits include Stumptown, Spirit Rangers, Scott Cooper’s film Hostiles featuring Christian Bale and Wes Studi, and Chelsea Handler’s “Chelsea and Chelsea Does.”

 In April 2022, she was named one of two “Educators of the Year” by Variety. Dr. Proudfit’s great-great-grandmother-in-law, Caterina “Mama” Mazzetti, was also a Harvey Girl.

John SAYLES is an independent film director, screenwriter, editor, actor, and novelist. He has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, for Passion Fish and Lone Star.

His film Men with Guns was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. His directorial debut, Return of the Secaucus 7, has been added to the National Film Registry.

TIM KRUBSACK is an accomplished television producer and network executive. He has been the head of unscripted programming for networks including Syfy, USA, and Z Living. 

Some of his shows include Face Off (winner of the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Competition Program), Ghost Hunters, Paranormal Witness, and Joe Rogan Questions Everything. As a producer, he has been involved with MTV’s Road Rules, and FOX’s Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction?

For Trio he produced the critically-acclaimed documentary Outlaw Comic: The Censoring of Bill Hicks. 

He graduated from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, with a degree in Cinema-Television Production.