Engages, Educates, and Empowers Student Filmmakers
Film industry professionals mentor students to step out of their comfort zone and tell their stories. We unleash untapped creativity and encourage the next generation of working filmmakers to transform the culture of the industry.

YUSEF MAYES
Yucef is the Outreach Consultant at the Community Media Center for Express Newark,
a center for socially engaged art and design in Newark, NJ, where people co-create, collaborate, and make art for social change. He is a graduate of The New School University NYC, and a former writing fellow of Center of Black Literature of Medgar Evers College of Brooklyn. Co-Founder of Shine Black Art & Film, a film company that aims to broaden the narrative for underrepresented people of color. Yucef's 2nd short film ZAHRA AND THE OIL MAN was an OFFICIAL SELECTION of American Black Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, and Pan African-Film Festival. ZAOM was nominated for Outstanding Short Film in Black Reel Awards. ZAOM can be viewed on kweli.tv , Muslim Content Streaming Site https://www.alchemiya.com/ and Tim Reid's own streaming site, LegacyTV. ZAOM premiered on CBS Channel 2 NY as part of African-American Short Films collection. Yucef's next film The Patient, about a sickly mother who escapes the hospital for the most heartbreaking reason is Produced by Cinereach and Wavelength Productions. It was released in late 2021.

BRIT HARLEY
Brit is the Founder and Publisher of Five Wards Media, based in Newark, NJ. Five Wards centers on the concerns, voices, and information needs of the diverse communities in Newark. They do this by producing unique coverage of neighborhoods across the city and training residents to tell their own stories. Brit was also the recipient of Stanford University’s John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship, which empowers diverse journalism leaders to succeed as effective change agents, sustain democratic communities and defend press freedom around the world. Through The Newark News & Story Collaborative, a pilot project Brit began while working at the local public radio station WBGO, Brit has trained community members who have produced previously unreported stories. During her senior JSK fellowship, she focused on organizational strategy to support producing unique coverage that centers the concerns, voices and information needs of the diverse communities in Newark while leading WBGO Jazz Station’s first community storytelling lab that trained and compensated city residents as reporters.

DUSTIN DUMAS
Dustin is an author, host and producer. She hosts and produces the television shows, Dustin’s Kaleidoscope and What’s Up Around Town. She was the station manager of the award-winning South Orange Maplewood Television station (SOMAtv), has been part of community television stations in Illinois, California and New Jersey and enjoys helping people tell their stories. She is also an avid family historian and has written extensively and given presentations on her Civil War veteran ancestors, Henry Beard and Alexander Branscomb. She has been invited to present on her Civil War ancestors at the African American Civil War Museum in Washington D.C several times. Through proof of her direct lineage, she has been admitted membership into the lineage groups, Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War and Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic. She has been working on a documentary about her Civil War ancestors. Ms. Dumas has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Texas, Austin and a Certificate of Western and Eastern Europe: Institutions and Corporate Governance from the WHU Koblenz School of Corporate Management, Koblenz Germany.