Our Small But Mighty Team

Contact: iyabo@browngirlsdocmafia.org
Pronoun: She/Her

Before founding BGDM in 2015, Iyabo Boyd had a long history of supporting women filmmakers with positions at industry institutions Kickstarter, Good Pitch, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Tribeca Film Institute, Topic.com, Hamptons Film Festival, and IFP. From 2015 to 2017 Iyabo also founded and ran Feedback Loop, a consulting company for documentary filmmakers. Named a “Black Visionary'' by the Sundance Film Institute, Iyabo was a 2019 Rockwood JustFilms Fellow at the Ford Foundation, and a 2021 recipient of both DocNYC’s New Leader Award and Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival’s Impact Award.

Iyabo is also a screenwriter, director, and producer working in fiction and documentary film. Her award winning short, Me Time, a black feminist comedy about self care and masturbation, played over 25 festivals in 2019 including Blackstar, Rooftop Films, and Miami Shorts Fest, and was featured on Short of the Week. Her upcoming feature, Kayla & Eddie En Français, a collaboration with her dad, is about an estranged Black father and daughter reconnecting in Paris. For this project, Iyabo was a fellow in the Sundance Film Festival’s Talent Forum, the Sundance Film Institute’s Screenwriting Intensive, IFP’s No Borders Project Forum, and was awarded a SFFILM Rainin Screenwriting Grant. She was both a Sundance Creative Producers Fellow and an Impact Partners Creative Producers Fellow in 2016 with the feature documentary For Ahkeem, which premiered at the Berlin Intl. and Tribeca Film Festivals. 

Originally from Denver, Iyabo graduated from NYU’s Tisch School with a BA in Film & Television, and is currently based on Munsee Lenape, Wappinger and Schaghticoke land, also known as the Bronx, New York.

Contact: nive@browngirlsdocmafia.org
Pronoun: She/Her

Nivedita Das is a South Asian independent documentary film producer, senior program manager, and social impact advisor with over 20 years of experience across sectors. She believes passionately in the power of people serving as their own advocates of change, and is a fierce champion of participation as the bedrock of all her work endeavors. Building on this approach, Nive hopes to produce inspiring, participant driven stories of hope, change, and truth; and work on projects that place people, power, and social change front and center. 

In addition to her role at Brown Girls Doc Mafia, she leads the award winning production company, The Monsoon Diaries. Prior to this, Nive was the Executive Director of CatManDew Co-labs, an incubator for South Asian digital artists based in Nepal. She also served as an advisor in the education, research, advocacy, technology, art and cultural heritage sectors for diverse global organizations such as USAID, the Academy for Educational Development, Qatar Foundation, & Qatar Museums. Nive is a member of the Asian American Documentary Association, a 2018 Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival Scholar, a 2020 Docs In Progress Fellow, and a member of the Brown Girls Doc Mafia. She currently splits her time between Piscataway and Nacotchtank (Anacostan) land, also known as Washington, D.C., and Pune, India.

Contact: susan@browngirlsdocmafia.org
Pronoun: She/Her

Susan Q. Yin is a visual communicator and digital strategist with over a decade of experience serving mission-driven organizations. She works to elevate storytelling by integrating art and design with data-driven communication and technology solutions.

A 1.5 generation immigrant from Shanghai, China, Susan previously directed all communications, design and digital projects at the International Documentary Association (IDA). Prior, she received a Master of Science degree in environmental geography and worked on various environmental and climate change campaigns in London and Washington, DC.

Contact: kitty@browngirlsdocmafia.org
Pronoun: Any Pronouns

Kitty Hu is a queer Chinese diasporic documentary filmmaker and visual journalist with roots in the Bay Area, California. As the daughter of immigrants, Kitty’s work applies community-centered documentary tactics to amplify stories at the intersection of justice and human relationships, looking at topics like labor, housing, culture, migration, and climate.

Her work has been featured on HBO, CNN+, Hulu, PBS. Her personal short, Golden Boy, played in festivals nationally including DOC NYC and LAAPFF. As a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Asian American Documentary Network, and Asian American Journalists Association, she has received generous opportunities to amplify stories about community resistance in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, intergenerational restaurants in Koreatown, and youth mobilization in suburban Fremont, California.

Contact: chandler@browngirlsdocmafia.org
Pronoun: She/They

Chandler is a social worker, arts organizer, ecotherapist, and visual artist, who employs an integrative approach to holistic care in community organizing. A Black woman, raised with roots in the U.S. South and the West Indies, she is “positively obsessed” with co-creating spaces of healing, love and imagination that center the intersectional experience of Black, Indigenous, people of color. 

As the former Manager of Impact and Engagement at Sundance Institute, Chandler led initiatives that supported over 500 independent arts organizations. She received her Masters of Social Work from Columbia University where she specialized in trauma-informed approaches to community care and earth-based healing practices. In addition, Chandler was a Lewis Hine Documentary Fellow, Humanity in Action Fellow, and teaching artist. She graduated from Duke University with a Bachelor in Arts degree in Sociology and a minor in Documentary Studies.

Along with organizing for BGDM, she is a facilitator, community gathering consultant, and constantly curating spaces that foster play, creativity, and connection. She is the proud present of Black folx who have poured love, endurance, and belief into her life and the lives of those around them.

Contact: lissa@browngirlsdocmafia.org
Pronoun: She/They

Lissa Deonarain is an emerging queer, disabled, multiracial Guyanese-American documentary filmmaker, producer, editor and communications specialist from Omaha, Nebraska. They are dedicated to transforming the documentary industry to reflect and amplify the voices of those that have been silenced, both in front of the camera and behind it, and using communications to shift narratives. Her work has shown at the International Center of Photography, The Bush Films and on PBS Independent Lens.

She has produced dozens of shorts and nonfiction series both nationally and internationally for award-winning directors, and edited for major brands, popular content creators and national organizations. Their 2018 debut short Double Diaspora made waves among Indo-Caribbeans, enhancing the growing creative repertoire of the community. Her films are deeply rooted in social justice and explore themes such as identity, belonging, memory, and community, largely inspired by her own experiences. Most recently, they served as Associate Producer on the award-winning film A Reckoning in Boston.

She is currently based on Munsee Lenape and Canarsie land, also known as Brooklyn, New York.