The Team
DIRECTor & senior producer –– Kirsten Kelly
Kirsten is an Emmy and Golden Telly Award-winning documentary filmmaker, Co-founder of Spargel Productions and former Senior Producer at Transform Films/Odyssey Impact. Her upcoming film, This Is Where I Learned Not To Sleep, looks at the need for police reform surrounding crimes against women and children and will premiere Spring 2023. Her Emmy-winning film, The Homestretch, about homeless high school students in the Chicago Public Schools, appeared on Independent Lens/PBS and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Reporting. Her animated short film about three Rosie the Riveters, A Girl With the Rivet Gun, was recently archived at the FDR Presidential Library. At Transform Films/Odyssey Impact she was Senior Producer of the Telly Award-winning series, Healing the Healers, about faith leaders responding to mass shootings, domestic violence and teen mental health crisis. Her projects have been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, the Sundance Institute, ITVS, Kartemquin Films, Good Pitch, The Bertha Foundation, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, Chicago Media Project, Chicken and Egg and The Fledgling Fund, among others. Kirsten is a member of the Sundance Documentary Institute and a graduate of Juilliard’s Master Directing program.
DIRECTor –– Katie Taber
Taber recently directed the Wavelength Productions feature Let Me Be Me, the coming of age story of a young man who, as a child, underwent a unique and controversial treatment for autism. Other recent documentary projects include Siempre, Luis, which follows Luis Miranda, the father of Lin-Manuel Miranda, as he attempts to mount a production of “Hamilton” in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Siempre, Luis premiered at Sundance 2020 and is streaming on HBO. Other credits include the PBS special Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death and the award-winning Milwaukee 53206. She has worked on films for the PBS series FRONTLINE including Life and Death in Assisted Living, Dollars and Dentists, and The Child Cases, and she was a co-producer on the four-part PBS NOVA series: The Fabric of the Cosmos. Taber co-produced the Emmy-award winning feature documentary Homestretch.
Executive PRoducer –– CarolAnne Dolan
CarolAnne is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning executive producer who has been committed to creating high quality content throughout her career as a network executive and as an independent producer. She has worked across genres, including feature documentaries, non-fiction series and short films, and on subject matter as diverse as mass incarceration, shark attacks and The Beach Boys. Before joining Transform Films, CarolAnne was Vice President of Documentary Series at A&E Television, where she served as executive producer of the Biography series, which won numerous awards including two Emmys, and was consistently the highest-rated series on the network. She was also Executive Producer at NHNZ, an independent production company in New Zealand, she created many top-rated shows for National Geographic Channel, Bio Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery, and others. CarolAnne began her television career at National Geographic, where she worked on the series Explorer and nurtured her love of all things wild.
Executive PRoducer –– Nick Stuart
NICK STUART is founder and CEO of Transform Films Inc and a Peabody award winner whose 30 year career as documentary director, producer and TV reporter and presenter spans both sides of the Atlantic. Apart from independent documentary films Nick has made programming for Netflix, Starz, BBC, ITV, Discovery, National Geographic and Al Jazeera English and was EP on Serving Life with Forest Whitaker that won the Cine Golden Eagle Judges’ award in the U.S. His experiences reporting around the world led him to set up Transform Films Inc. as a focus for independent filmmakers committed to using documentary storytelling as a catalyst for change to bring about a more just world. Nick is a member of the Producers’ Guild of America.
Editor –– Cheree Dillon
Cheree Dillon is a documentary film editor based in New York City, a long way from her childhood spent in small town Kansas. Cheree is drawn to intimate, character-driven narratives, non-linear storytelling and the rich texture of archival. She edited the Emmy nominated film Off and Running which aired on PBS’s P.O.V. series, co-edited the award-winning feature docs Death by Design and Surviving Amina. Her broadcast work includes editing on THE HOMESTRETCH on PBS’s series Independent Lens, WNET’s special THE TALK: Race in America, and segments for THE TODAY SHOW. Cheree also edited the feature films Massacre River, Sense the Wind, Song of Hannah, and award-winning short films An Imaginary Thing, Cosmo, and Southmost USA. Cheree is a member of the New York Women in Film and Television documentary committee and has produced several panels focused on career building in post production, interactive filmmaking, independent film distribution and social media/marketing. When she’s not in the edit suite, Cheree volunteers in two community gardens in West Harlem growing food and neighborhood connections with the West Harlem Garden Collective.
Associate Producer –– Nancy Dionne
Nancy Dionne is a documentary filmmaker, associate producer and award-winning photojournalist. Past projects include: BreakThru Films “New Voices” segment for the 2018 Oscars, Lost Footage Films for The Wall Street Journal Magazine “Columnists” series, Hitman Productions ITVS series pilot “Should we Kid or Not?” and for Director Dempsey Rice “The Animated Mind of Oliver Sacks”.
Her focus to take a viewer “to a threshold” which is why producing stories that create new possibilities for envisioning better futures is her passion. The word “Future” is in most of her personal projects, including her first film “All I See is the Future” which is distributed by Comcast/Kweli.TV and “The Future is Rotten” at Yahoo!Japan.
She founded “Express Your Last Wishes: Leave in Love” to help people clarify their intentions for loved ones via video messages, is a Deans List graduate from the New York Film Academy’s documentary program and holds a BFA in photography with honors from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Transform Films
TRANSFORM FILMS creates extraordinary, thought provoking and entertaining non-fiction content. We are exceptional in our delivery of high prestige and quality films and series. We approach each and every project with fearless storytelling. Recent accolades include a Peabody Award in 2018 and a Peabody nomination in 2019, Best Doc Short at the Tribeca Film Festival, a Special Prize for Human Rights at the Venice International Film Festival and Best Documentary at the Urbanworld Festival, and a Golden Telly to name just a few. One of our films, Serving Life, launched Oprah Winfrey’s Documentary Club.
IMPACT CAMPAIGN–– Odyssey Impact
Odyssey Impact, Inc., is an interfaith media nonprofit with a mission to drive social change through innovative storytelling and media connection faith and secular communities. Odyssey Impact will conduct the Social Impact Campaign for Stranger / Sister. A social impact campaign is a strategic engagement program providing the resources for faith and secular communities to address the most critical social issues in our society, such as hate. The guiding principle of each campaign is to use film to raise audience awareness, shifting attitudes and inspiring action among people of faith and goodwill. The result? A society connected, engaged and united.
HATE CAN'T STOP A SISTERHOOD.