Michéle Stephenson

About

As co-founding member of the Rada Film Group, filmmaker, artist, and author Michéle Stephenson pulls from her Panamanian and Haitian roots and international experience as a human rights attorney to tell provocative stories in a variety of media that speak to personal and systemic liberation. Her work has appeared on a variety of broadcast and web platforms, including PBS, Showtime and MTV. Her most recent film, AMERICAN PROMISE, was nominated for three Emmys including Best Documentary and Best News Coverage of a Contemporary Issue. The film also won the Jury Prize at Sundance, and was selected for the New York Film Festivals’ Main Slate Program. Stephenson was recently awarded the Creative Capital Fellowship, the inaugural Chicken & Egg Pictures Filmmaker Breakthrough Award and is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow. Her current feature documentary work-in-progress is supported by the National Film Board of Canada and the Sundance Documentary Fund. Her community engagement accomplishments include the PUMA BritDoc Impact Award for a Film with the Greatest Impact on Society, a Revere Award Nomination from the American Publishers Association, and she is a fellow of Skoll Storytellers of Change. Her recent book, PROMISES KEPT, written along with co-authors Joe Brewster and Hilary Beard, won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work.