Yacov Freedman
Yacov Freedman is the Senior Podcast Producer for Turner Classic Movies. He’s worked in TV and podcasts for twenty years and is a proud member of the Directors Guild of America. During COVID he watched more than 100 baseball movies, which just goes to show: never give up on your dreams.
Joshua Kessler
Joshua E. Kessler is a Los Angeles-based showrunner, producer, director, and writer specializing in unscripted, documentary, and docudrama content. A two-time Emmy nominee, he is known for compelling work in true crime, history, lifestyle, and human-interest storytelling. His credits include acclaimed series for Netflix, A&E, and Showtime, such as Unsolved Mysteries, Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, and House Hunters International. A member of both the Directors Guild and Producers Guild of America, Kessler actively seeks new creative opportunities with a strong emphasis on collaboration.
Rebecca Cunningham
Rebecca Cunningham is the Founder and CEO of Cordelia Studios, an award-winning kids’ podcast company. She started the kids’ podcast, Girl Tales in 2017 and has since helped build podcasts for Mattel, Realm, National Geographic, Spotify Kids & Family, Sony, America’s Test Kitchen, and tonies. She was honored with the Webby for Best Kids & Family Podcast Episode, a Signal Award, the Kennedy Center’s Next 50 Award, and The Gotham/Variety Audio Honors.
Jessica Shaw
Jessica Shaw is a print and audio journalist who was a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly before hosting a pop-culture show for more than a decade on SiriusXM. She has moderated premieres and panels all over the country, from Comic Con to SXSW to 92Y, and has written for Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, and Time Magazine. Her New York Times article, “Recreating a Family’s Lost Holocaust Story, Step by Step” won a Lowell Thomas Award from the Society for American Travel Writers.
Jamie Denbo
Jamie Denbo is a lifelong comedian and occasional professional screenwriter/producer/playwright/actor. Her newest mission is for her alter ego “Beverly Ginsberg” to bring about generational harmony and global peace through love, laughter, inappropriate behavior and podcasting. (And if you know any single men for her least favorite daughter – the one with the eating problem – let her know!)
Marina Michelson
Marina Michelson is a writer, director, and actor originally from Tel Aviv, born to Soviet émigrés from the Republics of Georgia and Moldova. Her work explores identity and power through the everyday lives of women, as well as the rhythms of the contemporary immigrant experience. She holds a BFA in Theater from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and her short films have been recognized on the film festival circuit, including “Stagiaire,” which premiered at the 2021 Maryland Film Festival and “Biophilia,” which garnered the Outstanding Achievement Award for Best Screenplay at the 2018 Brooklyn Film Festival. She is currently in development on her first feature film, a coming-of-age refusenik story set in 1970s Soviet Union, with which she was a Top 50 Nicholl Fellowship semi-finalist, a Humanitas New Voices Fellowship semi-finalist, a 2024 fellow with NYU’s Production Lab Development Studio, and a 2025 recipient of NYU’s Production Lab Financing Slate.
Danielle Dardashti
Danielle Dardashti returns to her roots with this project – revisiting her family’s story and getting back to broadcasting. She’s a former TV/radio reporter and Emmy-winning documentary writer/producer. Danielle now leads storytelling workshops and advises companies on story strategy. She’s a Moth StorySLAM champ and co-founder of Storyboom, a live storytelling show. Danielle and her husband are co-authors of the Jewish Family Fun Book series.
Robert Axelrod
Robert Axelrod is a gay Jewish writer based in Los Angeles, originally hailing from Michigan, whose work focuses on exploring the intersectionality of identity and culture. He is a past participant of the Warner Bros. Discovery Access Writers Program, Humanitas New Voices fellowship, CineStory TV fellowship, and is a previous winner of the ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition as well as The A-List, an annual competition honoring the best work by assistants in the entertainment industry.
Omer Benjakob
Omer Benjakob is an investigative journalist with Haaretz in Israel. He covers disinformation and is focused on the intersection of technology and politics. He was born in New York, raised in Tel Aviv and is a research fellow at the LPI in Paris. He divides his time between these locations.
Kate Mishkin
Kate Mishkin is a podcast producer and writer whose reporting has taken her from from the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia, to the beaches in San Onofre, California. Her work has appeared in ProPublica, The Guardian, and the LA Times.