Speakers and Panelists

Emily Best

Emily Best is the founder and CEO of Seed&Spark, a platform that makes entertainment more diverse, inclusive, connected and essential. Seed&Spark’s platform and national education program have helped thousands of bold storytellers raise millions to bring to life entirely new stories, and Seed&Spark delivers those stories into workplaces for employee training, engagement, and intelligence through an enterprise SaaS platform Film Forward. Film Forward gathers the qualitative and quantitative data essential for driving lasting structural change for inclusive and productive workplaces.

Michael DiBiasio-Ornelas

Michael DiBiasio-Ornelas is an award-winning writer and filmmaker currently residing in St. George, Vermont, whose latest film The Yorkie Werewolf (his fourth and wildest feature film), is screening at MHFF. His previous feature, The Sleepless, was named “Best U.S. Feature” by the 2020 New York Independent Cinema Awards, “Best Drama” at the 2020 Alternative Film Festival, and “Best Experimental Feature” at the 2020 Montreal Independent Film Festival.

Rick Clark

Film/TV Music Supervisor Rick Clark’s credits include working with Jason Reitman on Up In The Air, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (a film about the critically acclaimed band Big Star), Billy Bob Thornton’s Jayne Mansfield’s Car, the AMC episodic Western show Hell On Wheels, Oprah Winfrey’s Gospel drama Greenleaf for the OWN network and Sundance TV’s Hap And Leonard, which was nominated Best Music Supervision in a Television Drama for the 2019 Guild of Music Supervisor Awards. Most recently, Clark has been Music Supervising the AMC Navajo crime drama Dark Winds, which is produced by George R.R. Martin and Robert Redford.

Neil Cleary (Music Panel)

Neil has worked for the past 10 years as a music supervisor on projects for Lexus, Expedia, and Toyota. As a composer, he has written music for PBS, Nickelodeon, Volvo, Intel, among independent documentary projects.

Scott Lebeda

For the last 18 years Scott has worked in camera departments for reality tv, commercials, and feature films. For the last 7 years Scott has been a camera operator for feature films, culminating in operating on the Academy Award winning Best Picture film CODA. He has recently joined Talamas Digital Cinema to help build more of the infrastructure in the New England film community.

Michael Rosenfeld

Documentary filmmaker and television executive Michael Rosenfeld has covered the outdoors since his days as a writer and producer at National Geographic. He is an award-winning producer and writer with extensive experience in documentary production and digital media. Recently he executive produced the critically acclaimed PBS series America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston, which travels from Maine to Oregon to investigate what our outdoor lives are like today. He has produced and written films about a broad sweep of topics, from anthropology to history to volcanology. In a career spanning network broadcast, cable and public television, he has won numerous awards, including 11 News & Documentary Emmys.

Alecia Orsini

Alecia Orsini is an award winning producer, director and multi-media professional with 15+ years experience working in the film industry. She has worked for GBH fundraising and marketing for local NPR stations, owned her own video production agency as well as advised productions as a consultant.

Tom Pearo (Music Panel)

Tom Pearo is a professional touring and recording musician who currently acts as the music licensing director for Big Heavy World. His original music has been licensed for usage with Burton Snowboards, MTV, PBS as well as other local placements here in Vermont.

Pat Wright

Born and bred in Chittenden County, Pat has been on the backside of a camera since his grade school yearbook in the early 80's. In those years, Pat has worked in many cities and studios as both an assistant and a photographer. Pat spent 18 years in Seattle where he opened his first studio and shot product and action for many clients inside and outside the snow industry. In 2013 he and his family moved back home to Vermont to help open Burton Snowboards' in-house studio, and continued there for 8 yrs prior to moving to Driven Studio as their Senior Photographer. Pat's definition of work life balance includes winters snowboarding in the mountains and summers floating on Lake Champlain with a sprinkle of family travel each year. Pat takes great pride in calling Vermont home.