At the end of August, along with fellow members of the creative community, we were delighted to announce the formation of the SIE Society, an organization designed to serve as a central hub to connect, empower and create alliances between Social Impact Entertainment companies, content creators, organizations, institutions and professionals.
We are building an SIE platform and ecosystem that will engage communities in multiple SIE arenas, including film, television, new media, theatre, in order to foster discussion, advocacy and action in order to create a more positive and inclusive world. The SIES website (www.siesociety.org) currently offers Resources, for a deeper dive into published studies and reports on specific SIE subjects, as well as an Ecosystem of SIE organizations around the world, and a Calendar of SIE Events. We are currently developing plans for further SIES offerings, including producing an annual SIES Impact Summit and SIES Impact Awards event, SIES Educational Workshops and Master Classes, both in the U.S. and internationally, SIE Mentoring Programs, and an SIES Newsletter.
Key founding Partners include the USC Media Institute for Social Change, USC’s Hollywood, Health and Society, Randy Testa from Harvard’s X-Media Lab and Professional Education Division of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, Producers Without Borders, the Austin Film Festival, Yea!, SIMA Studios, Harness, and Journeys in Film. With global inclusion in mind, we expect that the list of members and allied organizations will increase dramatically in the time ahead.
Our organization is being led by an experienced team of industry professionals. Robert Rippberger and I are serving as Co-Executive Directors. Rebecca Graham Forde is the Head of Partnerships & Amplification, Tobias Deml is Head of Content & Impact; Hiroki Kamada is Head of Diversity, Inclusion & Representation, with Devon Dansky as Head of Community Engagement, Kayvan Mashayekh as Head of International, Christina Lindstrom as Head of Impact Measurement & Assessment, and Digital Domain’s Jeff Chao as Head of Finance.
We are being guided by an Advisory Board that includes Laura Herb from the Skoll Center for Social Impact Entertainment and accomplished producers such as Effie T. Brown, Kate McCallum, Kia Kiso, Anne Marie Gillen, Efuru Flowers, Rikki Hughes, Christina Lee Storm, Barbara Morgan, Adhrucia Apana, Michael Taylor and Miguel Sabido, as well as renowned human rights advocates Bonnie Abaunza, Marya Bangee and Muslim Public Affairs Council’s Sue Obedei, with others expected to be added as the SIE Society’s membership grows in its diversity and global reach.
We are encouraging people to please sign up for free memberships through our website: http://www.siesociety.org, where additional information about the SIES is available.
Additionally, we are active on the following social media platforms:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/siesocietyorg
https://twitter.com/siesociety
https://www.instagram.com/siesociety/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William Nix is the Chairman/CEO of Creative Projects Group® and a Producer with extensive experience in the entertainment, media, sports, and intellectual property fields. He is also a Partner in the social and environmental impact investment firm, LOHAS Advisors and Capital. He is a member of the Producer's Council of the PGA, a founding member of its Social Impact Entertainment Task Force and member of its Global One, Education, Independent Film, Documentary and Animation Committees. He is also the Co-Executive Director and a founding members of the SIE Society, the leading alliance in Social Impact Entertainment who mission is to connect, equip and amplify SIE organizations and creative producers around the globe. He is also a lifetime voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, serving on its Grants Committee, as well as a member of the Television Academy. Will was the Co-Chair of Baker Botts' Entertainment, Media and Sports Practice Group, VP of Legal and Business Affairs for NBA Properties, and COO of the MPAA's Global Content Protection Group.
With Producer Salma Hayek, he served as Executive Producer of an animated feature film, distributed by Universal and Netflix, based on Kahlil Gibran's iconic work, The Prophet. Written and directed by Roger Allers (The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin) and starring Salma Hayek, Liam Neeson and John Krasinski, scored by Gabriel Yared, with Yo-Yo Ma, and songs by Irish singers Damian Rice, Glen Hansard and Lisa Hannigan. Dreamlike animated tone-poem sequences were created by eight world-class animation directors from around the world. Among its ten award nominations were three Annie-Nominations and inclusion in the Oscars Animated Feature Film Nomination Short List.
His recent projects include two documentary features: Power, about access to the global and local energy systems, and a historical overview of an important era of American musical and cultural history entitled This is Ragtime: The Birth of American Music. He is also producing a dramatic biographical feature entitled Gibran, a theatrical stage musical entitled Broken Wings, based on Kahlil Gibran’s first novel about his lost love, Selma, and two fictional dramatic television series, one entitled Trailblazers, based on the pre-NBA stories of professional African-American basketball teams and the other An Accidental Cuban, about a Cuban national in the colonial seaside city of Cienfuegos, hustling as a translator, desperate to leave Cuba and return to America. He and his partners are also developing projects to expand the Daytona International Speedway, and its related family of brands, into a character-based animated/live-action film, television and multimedia entertainment franchise distributed worldwide in all media and ancillary channels.
His work involves both traditional media and multiple content delivery platforms, technologies and genres. He is currently an Advisory Board member of Journeys in Film, a non-profit organization that develops and produces innovative curriculum, discussion guide and other educational materials for teachers/students to use in order to support the reach, understanding and legacy of films and television programs. In addition, he is an Advisory Board member of the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center’s Hollywood Health & Society, the Global Arts Corps, Partnerships for Change and a former Advisory Board member of the Austin Film Festival and Project GRAD USA.
Tags:
