Filmmaker Conference

Tina Romero is a filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. After earning her BA in Cinema Studies at Wellesley College, she attended the NYU Tisch Graduate Film program, where she won the Warner Brothers Film Award for accomplishments in filmmaking. Tina has cut her teeth with her recently released debut feature Queens of the Dead, a unique take on a zombie tale fitting for the daughter of legendary Pittsburgh filmmaker George Romero. 

Sharon Badal is the former vice president of programming for the Tribeca Film Festival. She was with the festival from its inception through 2023 and is now Tribeca’s Music Video Programmer. Sharon is a full-time faculty member at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, recognized as a Distinguished Teacher. She judged the Soho House Screenplay competition for several years and has been a reviewer for Screen Ireland’s Focus Shorts Funding Program, evaluating screenplays and required applicant elements. In 2022 she was invited by the BBC as one of six short film programmers worldwide to help curate the BBC Longshots program. Sharon has been a panelist, presenter, or juror at numerous festivals and for industry organizations globally. 

Hansen Bursic is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist currently based between Los Angeles and Pittsburgh. He runs Hansen Bursic Film, a Pittsburgh-based nonfiction production company dedicated to historically excluded narratives, specifically of LGBTQ+ and working-class people. He was previously named a DOC NYC Documentary New Leader, a Ford Foundation Rockwood Documentary Leadership Fellow, and a Temple University 30 Under 30. His latest film, Trans Heaven, Pennsylvania, has won awards and screened internationally, including the British Film Institute’s Flare Film Festival and NewFilmmakers LA. Beyond filmmaking, he currently serves as the Festival Director of Pittsburgh's Backyard Docs Film Festival, the largest documentary film festival in Pennsylvania. He is also a journalist and film critic with bylines in Documentary magazine, cinéSPEAK, and QBurgh.

Max Geschwind works in the Media Finance department, which focuses on packaging, sourcing financing for, and/or selling the distribution rights to independently financed films, at leading entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Geschwind, who joined the agency in 2021, is a member of CAA Elevate, a state-of-the-art program for agents and executives in training.

He graduated from the University of Southern California with degrees in Cinema and Media Studies and Political Science.

Geschwind is based in Los Angeles.

Darrien Michele Gipson is the Executive Director of SAGindie, an educational organization for independent filmmakers. Darrien is a graduate of UCLA, where she received her BA in English Literature; and USC, where she earned an MFA from the Peter Stark Producers Program. She was the Vice President of Development for DEF Pictures before joining SAGindie in 2002 as Festival Coordinator. Through SAGindie, she traveled extensively to film festivals, film schools, and conferences, hosting workshops and teaching filmmakers how to hire professional actors using SAG-AFTRA’s low budget contracts. Since becoming SAGindie’s Executive Director in 2006, Darrien has expanded the organization to reach more festivals and help even more creators on all platforms to bring their projects to fruition. She continues to travel around the world speaking on panels, mentoring writers and filmmakers, and championing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the entertainment industry.

Charlotte Glynn spent her formative years in Pittsburgh (Reizenstein, Allderdice) and has focused much of her career on making fearlessly honest, intimate, character-driven films set in her hometown. Her first feature documentary, Rachel Is, had its broadcast premiere on PBS America reFramed and has screened internationally including at the True/False Film Festival. Her most recent film, a short narrative The Immaculate Reception premiered at Sundance Film Festival and was a Vimeo Staff Pick, won the Hammer to Nail Short Film Contest, and the Special Jury Award at the New Orleans Film Festival among others. Charlotte was named one of the “25 New Faces in Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine and has been awarded residencies at Yaddo and the Berlin Talent Campus as well as two NYFA fellowship, most recently for screenwriting. She is currently in post-production on her first narrative feature, The Gymnast, which has participated in Sundance’s Catalyst Program, IFP week’s Project Forum, U.S & French Connection, and the Los Cabos International Film Festival works in progress market.

Megan McLachlan is co-founder of The Contending and can be heard on the weekly Contending at the Water Cooler Podcast, which discusses everything from new shows to predicting awards nominations. She has had essays and reviews published in Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, The Cut, Thrillist, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Washington Post, and on EW.com. Her novella, Loan Some, is available on Amazon, and she was named Pittsburgh Magazine's Best Local Writer in 2020. Follow her on social media at heydudemeg. 

Tim crafts character-driven stories full of humor, depth, and heart for screens of all sizes. His writing has appeared on Disney+, Disney Channel, Crackle, and more. His scripts have been recognized by both the Sundance Episodic Lab and the Academy Nicholl Fellowship. Through his story consulting company, Scripttsburgh, Tim helps fellow writers sharpen their voices, shape their scripts, and achieve their creative goals. He reads too much, visits nature too little, drinks coffee the exact right amount, and enjoys living with his wife in a house by the zoo

Chris is the Daytime Emmy nominated co-creator and writer of Dan vs., an animated half-hour comedy that ran on The Hub Network from 2011 to 2013. More recently he created the Sam Archer podcast for GoKidGo and wrote the 10 episode first season. He has also written for NowThis Politics, CloudCo’s Tiny Head, and Buddy Thunderstruck on Netflix. He is currently scripting short videos for Robert Reich and working on a script for a low-budget indie horror/comedy.

Scott Sander is both a screenwriter and executive producer. Prior to forming Pensé Productions he co-founded SightSound Technologies and led the firm as it made internet history. Mr. Sander negotiated the world’s first motion picture internet distribution agreement in 1999 with Artisan Entertainment for Darren Aronofsky’s award winning feature film Pi, which became the first film sold as a download over the internet. Mr. Sander produced Quantum Project, starring John Cleese, the first fully digital motion picture produced specifically for internet distribution. He created the motion picture project Buddy List, which was sold to MGM and evolved into Pensé Production’s 2004 First Look Agreement with MGM. Most recently he produced the feature film Hard Miles starring Matthew Modine and Sean Astin.

Sally Seitz is a screenwriter and playwright originally from Nashville, TN. Often, her scripts depict modern southern women and have been described as “if Flannery O’Connor was on a dating app.” Currently, Seitz is adapting her stage play, Six Inches Above the Knee, into a dark-comedy TV series for 20th Television as part of her first-place selection for the studio’s inaugural Emerging Playwrights Initiative. Seitz holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from CMU’s School of Drama where her environmental Rom Com screenplay, Too Many Fish in the Sea, won the top prize of the 2024 A.P Sloan Foundation Script Competition. Sally is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Screenwriting at the University of Pittsburgh.

Gabriel Theis is a neurodivergent writer/director with a B.A. in Media Communications from the University of Houston. Upon seeing the original Spider-Man no less than eight times in theaters at the tender of age of four, he knew that filmmaking was his passion. After working on local film productions and grabbing snacks for Drake and Travis Scott, Gabriel wrote, directed, and produced his micro-budget mockumentary, The Curse of Professor Zardonicus, which is currently available on VOD and streaming on Tubi. An alumnus of Roadmap Writer's Career Writer Program, Gabriel was signed by Industry Entertainment through Top Tier. A freelance writer and genre movie enthusiast, he has bylines at Polygon, Fangoria, Dread Central, and more

Emily Thomas is a writer, producer, educator, and advocate who has spearheaded nationally recognized scripted and documentary content that encourages and advances meaningful public discourse around consequential issues, most notably for the Netflix Original Series Longmire, which “paved the way for Native representation in entertainment” (United Press International), and Kartemquin Documentary Films, which was “founded to make democratic documentaries [and] be an actor in a democracy” (Current). She is an alumni of the Columbia College Chicago School of Film and Television and has worked with WME Entertainment, Warner Horizon Television, and Jerry Bruckheimer Productions. Emily is currently a Teaching Artist in Point Park University’s nationally ranked Conservatory of Performing Arts where she teaches screenwriting and creative producing. Her personal work explores an expansive definition of interpersonal and systemic violence and seeks to reframe our shared societal conception of the exploitive use of power and control.