WHAT WE CARRY - Team Bios
Cady Voge - Director/DP
Cady is a filmmaker and freelance journalist specializing in character-driven vérité storytelling. Based primarily in Colombia since 2015, Cady has covered conflict, cryptocurrency, and reproductive health, but mostly stories related to immigration. She has shot, produced, and directed short documentaries for NBC, The New Humanitarian, and independent production companies across the Americas. Cady was an International Women’s Media Foundation fellow and grantee for their Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice in the Americas program, and an alum of the Dart Center’s 2019 Reporting Safely in Crisis Zones course. She met the subjects of her forthcoming debut feature documentary — Magdiel, Mirna, and Joshua — while covering the migrant caravan in Mexico in 2018. At the start of the pandemic, with only half of photography complete and airports and borders across the region shuttering, Cady chose to relocate to Seattle in order to continue filming and ultimately complete production for What We Carry. She contributes to outlets including The BBC, The Guardian, Al Jazeera and Wired, among others. Before becoming a full-time storyteller, Cady directed an international education nonprofit based in Washington, DC, for five years, which brought her all over the world while conducting facilitator trainings for college students.
Rachel Clara Reed - Editor, Co-Producer
Rachel is an independent journalist and filmmaker working on stories about identity and migration. Originally from Seattle, she is based between Mexico City and Nairobi. She contributes to outlets including The New York Times, Atlas Obscura, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera English, News Deeply and Pacific Standard Magazine. Her short film, Somali Night Fever, published at The Guardian and shot in Somaliland, Kenya and Sweden, was long-listed and received a special mention at the 2020 One World Media Awards. Her short film Amarapura won Newcomer Short Documentary for the IAFOR Documentary Film Award & Festival 2016.
America Ferrera - Executive Producer
America Ferrera is an award-winning actor, director and producer known for her breakthrough role as “Betty Suarez” on ABC’s hit comedy, Ugly Betty. For her performance, Ferrera was awarded an Emmy®, a Screen Actors Guild Award®, and a Golden Globe®, as well as ALMA and Imagen Awards. Ferrera will make her feature film directorial debut with I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter and star in AppleTV+’s We Crashed and Warner Bros.’ Barbie. In 2017, Ferrera opened the Women’s March and co-founded the organization HARNESS, a community of artists, influencers and grassroots leaders that provides education and engagement opportunities to amplify the organizations and individuals working on behalf of social justice.
Ryan Piers Williams - Executive Producer
Ryan Piers Williams is an American filmmaker, artist, and the Co-Founder of Harness. Williams wrote and directed the feature film, The Dry Land, about a U.S. soldier returning home from war as he struggles to reconcile his experiences abroad with the life and family he left in Texas, which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in the Dramatic Competition. Williams has gone on to write and direct other film including X/Y, and is currently developing his next feature film, Staring at the Sun. In 2016, Williams Co-Founded Harness alongside America Ferrera and Wilmer Valderrama.
Michael Skolinik - Executive Producer
Michael Skolnik is a founding partner of The Soze Agency, a creative agency that works with companies, non-profits organizations and movements to create campaigns rooted in compassion, authenticity and equity.
Michael’s profile in the NY Times identified him as “the man you go to if you want to leverage the power of celebrity and the reach of digital media to soften the ground for social change.” Prior to that, he spent over a decade as a film director and producer. Michael serves on the Board of Directors for Rock The Vote, The Trayvon Martin Foundation, The Gathering For Justice and The Young Partners Board of The Public Theater.
Laura Pilloni - Producer
In addition to WHAT WE CARRY, Laura Pilloni has worked on feature-length and short form documentary and narrative film projects such as Front Cover (2015) and Kingdom Of Shadows (2015) since 2013. Most recently she was credited as associate producer for the women and human rights documentary, Home Truth (2017), as well as on the Chavela Vargas documentary, Chavela (2017). Keeping in line with her work on these impactful films, she is currently working on two documentaries that shine a light on inequalities faced by people of color and people of a low socioeconomic status, Lift directed by David Petersen and The Three Lives of David Wong directed by Diane Paragas.
Laura Tatham - Producer
Laura is a creative producer with a social justice focus. In addition to WHAT WE CARRY, she is currently producing the feature-length documentary Mama Bears and the short documentary BLACK Beauty. In the past five years she’s worked on numerous award-winning films—as associate producer on the feature-length documentaries Chavela (2017 Berlinale) and Dispatches from Cleveland (partnered with Color of Change for their 2016 #Voting WhileBlack viral campaign) and as the NYC production office manager for America, a series of silent, narrative shorts (2019 Sundance Film Festival). She is a 2020 Film Independent Documentary Lab and WIF/Sundance Institute Financing Intensive fellow.
Dawn Valadez - Advisor
Dawn, is a queer, Xicana, filmmaker, social worker, artist, youth development specialist, resource wrangler, and impact strategist. Raised by her Mexican American single mother, she never planned on being a filmmaker. Her award-winning, ITVS funded, feature documentary (with Kristy Guevara-Flanagan), GOING ON 13, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Co-director and producer with Katie Galloway, Dawn is spearheading THE PUSHOUTS impact campaign. Dawn is supporting with fundraising and impact campaign strategy.
Roberta Grossman
An award-winning filmmaker with a passion for history and social justice, Roberta Grossman has written, directed and produced more than 40 hours of film and television. Grossman wrote, produced and directed Who Will Write Our History, about Emanuel Ringelblum and the secret archives of the Warsaw Ghetto, co-produced by Arte and NDR. In 2018, Grossman co-directed and produced the Netflix Original Documentary Seeing Allred, about the women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Grossman’s 2012 Hava Nagila (The Movie) uses the song Hava Nagila as a portal into 150 years of Jewish history, culture and spirituality. Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh, Grossman’s 2008 film, was shortlisted for an Academy Award, aired on PBS, was nominated for a Primetime Emmy and won the audience award at 13 Jewish film festivals. Grossman directed Above and Beyond (2014), for producer Nancy Spielberg, about the American–Jewish WWII pilots who volunteered to fight in Israel’s War of Independence.
Adolfo Flores - Advisor
Adolfo Flores is a national security correspondent for immigration at BuzzFeed News. He's currently based in McAllen, Texas focusing on border coverage and Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP). Flores has traveled throughout Mexico with two caravans of immigrants and has spent months on the Mexican side of the border with immigrants and asylum-seekers. He previously worked for the Los Angeles Times, Pasadena Sun, and the Pasadena Star-News. A Los Angeles native, Flores graduated from Cal State Northridge. Flores and Voge met on the 2018 migrant caravan, when Flores became acquainted with Mirna and Magdiel and their story.
Deann Borshay-Liem - Advisor
Deann Borshay Liem has over twenty years experience working in development, production and distribution of independently produced documentaries. She is Producer/Director/Writer of First Person Plural, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, Geographies of Kinship, Memory of Forgotten War and the forthcoming Crossings. She has produced and consulted on a variety of award-winning films including The Apology; Breathin’: The Eddy Zheng Story; Ishi’s Return; Special Circumstances; Burqa Boxers; Mimi & Dona; Kelly Loves Tony; and AKA Don Bonus. A former Rockefeller Foundation and Sundance Institute fellow, Liem is the 2018 recipient of the Women, Peace and Security Fellowship from the San Francisco Film Society.
Rajiv Smith-Mahabir - Advisor
Rajiv has worked as a cinematographer on past successful feature documentaries including the Sundance Institute-funded and San Francisco International Film Festival Audience Award-winning Romeo is Bleeding, and was an editor on the PBS-screened The State of Eugenics. He most recently shot and edited a documentary in Colombia entitled Strangers to Peace.
Wendy Orbe - Intern
Wendy is an aspiring filmmaker who looks forward to learning about the creation and production of movies. Coming from Mexican heritage, she loves to explore the many different aspects and cultures of the world through anthropological study and analysis. Wendy has spent a lot of time at Cascadia Community College dedicating her time to exploring subjects out of her comfort zone to expand her knowledge on how the world works. She's hoping to further her knowledge through the study of national and international film industries.
Estephany Gonzalez - Intern
Estephany Gonzalez is an aspiring Immigration Attorney studying American Ethnic Studies, Spanish, and Diversity at the University of Washington. As a Mexican American, Estephany has spent a lot of time interacting with diverse Spanish-speaking communities which have inspired her to pursue a career in a field that intends to support the underserved undocumented community. During her time at the University of Washington she has developed an appreciation and understanding of cultural diversity which has encouraged her to interact with numerous diverse communities through study abroad programs to Perú, Vietnam, Taiwan, China, and Spain. She has developed a profound understanding of the importance of art as a medium in order to promote social justice through education.
Luis Luque-Torres - Intern
Luis is a Junior at the University of Washington majoring in Spanish and minoring in Diversity. As of this moment, he aspires to be a Spanish teacher but is exploring different options. In his free time, he enjoys hiking, mushroom foraging, and searching for his next passion.
Sashi Kala Govier - Intern
Sashi Govier is a junior student and research assistant at the University of Washington majoring in psychology. Sashi grew up in San Francisco, California, where she attended a bilingual immersion Spanish elementary school. From talking to Spanish-speakers on buses and on city streets to traveling to Perú and Nicaragua on service-based trips, language acted as a bridge across cultures. Sashi also believes in the power of storytelling and its impact on the awareness and understanding of others.
Diana Beare - Intern
Diana is a senior at University of Washington majoring in Photo/Media and minoring in Art History and DXArts. Moving forward in her career and education, Diana hopes to pursue new media art histories, curatorial studies or visual media anthropology. Outside of work and academics, she is passionate about the outdoors and engaging with her local community through art and music.