Filmmaker-journalist Jody Hassett Sanchez’s focus is the intersection/collision of faith and culture. Her first documentary was broadcast in 60+ countries, screened on 1000+ campuses and selected for IFP’s Filmmakers Lab and the State Department’s international cultural program.

She covered religion, art and education for ABC’s “World News Tonight” and “Nightline” and was a senior producer of CNN’s “Cold War Postscript,” a 24-part documentary style program filmed in 14 countries. She also created a weekly art program on CNN International which sparked many of the questions explored in MORE ART UPSTAIRS.

Jody is founder and director of the Africa Film Project, a weeklong documentary boot camp that equips young African storytellers with the technical resources and editorial skills to author and export short documentary films about their own communities.

Nelson Walker III learned his craft as cinematographer by working closely, for more than a decade, with the Maysle brothers, iconic directors of cinema vérité masterpieces. He shot the majority of Albert Maysle’s final film IRIS about Iris Apfel, fashion icon; and the 2015 documentary IN TRANSIT an observational portrait of several Amtrak riders whose lives are also in transit toward some future goal. The film won the “Best Documentary” award at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Josh Woltermann was co-producer on WELCOME TO LEITH, which premiered at Sundance in 2015 and broadcast on PBS’s Independent Len. Mr. Woltermann has worked with some of the film industry’s most respected contributors including Bill Moyers, Ric Burns, and Errol Morris.

Laina Barakat is a feature film producer and art director who also fronts a five piece folk-rock band, GirlandPiano. Laina Barakat’s film career began with Either/Or Films on their premier feature, THE SENSATION OF SIGHT Lead Producer. Laina’s directorial debut short film, GLOWWORM, will premier in early 2017. Laina has also been songwriter in residence at the Glen Workshops in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Judith Braun is a lifelong Manhattan artist who uses her fingers, dipped in charcoal, to draw on walls creating beautiful and complex patterns. Some are abstractions of flora and foliage, and some evoke light and energy. Fingerprints are a means of primal expression, drawn on the wall, representing both humanity’s uniqueness as individuals, as well as commonality.

Nick Kline creates spaces that promotes questioning, blurring the differences between exterior and interior. His ArtPrize entry examines the literal structure of a church and the structure of whiteness and racism, while creating a living shrine with new icons that suggest something familiar and welcoming.

Marissa Voytenko is an encaustic artist from Grand Rapids Michigan who uses shapes, grids, squares and lines in her work to symbolize various emotional, psychological states, thoughts or ideas. Her process is meditative and repetitive as she cuts, arranges, layers and scrapes away wax and paint.

The Tape Art Crew has been making collaborative adhesive drawings on buildings all over the world for over 25 years. As the inventors of Tape Art, they continue to work tirelessly to utilize this public art medium to transform architecture and lives.

Kevin Buist is an artist, writer, and the Exhibitions Director for ArtPrize. He has been working with ArtPrize since its inception, managing artists and venues and programming speakers, jurors, and other events.

Robin Cembalest is a writer, editorial strategist, and journalist. Channeling sixteen years of experience, she helps galleries, nonprofits, and other art-world clients define and implement editorial strategy in print, online, and in social media as Executive Editor of ARTnews.

Sarah Urist Green is an American art museum curator and the host of the PBS program the Art Assignment. Green worked as a curator for the Indianapolis Museum of Art from 2007 to 2013, curating exhibitions such as “Andy Warhol Enterprises” and “Graphite.”

Lisa Freiman was the inaugural Director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s new Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA), which will feature exhibitions, music, experimental performances and films. Freiman served as senior curator and chair of the contemporary art department at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) between 2002 and 2013.

Justine Ludwig is the Director of Exhibitions/ Senior Curator at Dallas Contemporary. Her professional experience consists of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Rose Art Museum, the Colby College Museum of Art, the Danforth Museum of Art, the Bernard Toale Gallery, and the MIT List Visual Arts Center.

Dan Cameron is an American art curator, most recently the former Chief Curator at the Orange County Museum of Art. He is also founder and Artistic Director of U.S. Biennial that produces Prospect New Orleans, a new international biennial whose first edition opened in November 2008. Cameron was Senior Curator at the New Museum from 1995 to 2006.

Michael Rakowitz is best known for his conceptual art. He is also Professor of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University. His work has appeared in venues worldwide including dOCUMENTA (13), P.S.1, MoMA, MassMOCA. He’s had solo exhibitions at Tate Modern in London, Lombard Freid Gallery in New York, Alberto Peola Arte Contemporanea in Torino, and Kunstraum Innsbruck and is represented by in New York by Lombard Freid Gallery. Rakowitz’s conceptual art is deeply political and focuses mostly on the Middle East namely Iraq which is where his family fled from.