Uri Rosenrauch
Uri Rosenrauch is a two-time Emmy Award nominee and New York City based writer and producer whose work spans television, film, streaming, and short fiction. From live action and animated comedies to psychological thrillers, scripted content for NBA live shows to a cooking series, he’s written and produced a wide range of projects.
Malka Wallick
Malka Wallick (she/they) is an award winning actor, writer, and filmmaker based in NYC. Their feature film Our Bodies & Other Shames is currently in post production and was the recipient of the 2025 ScreenCraft film fund, the CineStories Underrepresented Stories scholarship, and was a finalist for the Sundance Development Lab. Malka has developed their work as a 2024 Theatremacher Fellow with the Alliance for Jewish Theatre and is an active member of the She-Collective writer’s cohort. Her short play — in verse — Women of Valor, was a finalist with Red Bull’s short play competition. malkawallick.com
Liz Buda
Liz Buda is a writer and producer from the San Fernando Valley. She is an executive producer on the horror feature Malus, currently in post-production, and has sold projects to production companies, including Crystal City Entertainment and Biônica Filmes. Liz holds an MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA, where she won the Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award for her pilot based on her grandfather’s experience in the post-World War II black market.
Rachel McKay Steele
Rachel McKay Steele is a writer and comedian from Charleston, SC, who recently left bagels and Brooklyn for sunny Los Angeles. She has studied comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and has performed improv and stand-up around the country. Her solo show, Shiva for Anne Frank, premiered at the 2019 Hollywood Fringe Festival to rave reviews and won a Producer’s Encore Award. She has worked on numerous award-winning independent films, from Gayby to creative development for the Oscar-nominated What Happened Miss Simone? She is thrilled and humbled to be a part of the inaugural Jewish Writers’ Initiative, even though she never spells Initiative correctly on the first try. Rachel loves breakfast sandwiches, yoga, and her two rescue cats, Roxy and Esther.
Brett Melnick
Brett Melnick is an award-winning comedy writer, director and producer, currently on the support staff of Hulu/FOX’s King of the Hill reboot.
He began his career in the writers’ room of TBS’s The Last O.G., writing digital shorts for the TBS platform while serving as the show’s writer’s assistant. His additional support staff credits include the first two seasons of FX’s Dave.
Brett’s writing credits include ABC’s 2021 reimagining of The Wonder Years, where he penned the critically acclaimed episode “The Valentine’s Day Dance” in its Peabody Award-winning first season. His feature comedy script Yom Kippur was an official selection of The Black List in 2020.
In the digital space, Brett wrote and created the vertical news desk series What’s Up North with Trevor Tordjman, in partnership with Buzzfeed & Instagram. Most recently, he co-wrote and co-directed the sci-fi audio drama Faraway, starring Xochitl Gomez and Melonie Diaz. The series debuted at #4 on Apple Podcasts’ Sci-Fi charts and earned two 2025 Ambie nominations, including Podcast of the Year.
A graduate of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, Brett now teaches specialized TV writing courses at his alma mater part-time.
David Lombroso
David is a Brooklyn-based writer and filmmaker whose work mines the humor and heartbreak at the intersection of identity, inheritance, and assimilation. As a 2023–24 Jewish Writers’ Initiative Fellow, David developed and wrote PERPETUITY, a horror feature that satirizes the insidious spread of antisemitism through the outbreak of a bloodthirsty mind-virus at a summer camp in the Catskills. His debut feature NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM is slated for production in early 2026, and his comedy series SHTICK is currently out to streamers.