About Us
The SIE Society is the central hub for Social Impact Entertainment, CSR, and SBCC companies, organizations, institutions, and professionals.
The mission of the SIE Society is to bring together the Social Impact Entertainment community across all media platforms in order to amplify voices, expand resources and opportunities, and involve the next generation of storytellers. We educate, connect, and equip members and newcomers on what is SIE to begin with, how to implement it on your own projects, and how to find allies along the way while fostering diversity, inclusion, and change both in front of and behind the camera.
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Who We Are
Robert Rippberger
Founder, Co-Executive Director
Robert Rippberger is an award-winning filmmaker with an impressive slate of films spanning almost over two decades. He has established himself as a trailblazer in the film industry, known for his unique storytelling and broad array of creative and executive experience.
Rippberger is set to direct two upcoming films; the new drama-comedy “A Good Fight” and the creature feature "Monstrosity". He also recently wrapped production directing the new sci-fi thriller "Renner," starring Frankie Muniz and Violett Beane.
Rippberger’s current projects include producing the documentary "How to Build a Truth Engine" with Executive Producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov, which will be World Premiering at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival. He’s also producing the documentary “The Mouse That Roared” from Academy Award-nominated director Judith Ehrlich.
Rippberger was lead producer on the stop-motion animated film "The Inventor" from "Ratatouille" writer Jim Capobianco, starring Daisy Ridley, Stephen Fry, Marion Cotillard, and Matt Berry. The film was released theatrically in September ‘23, and is now available On Demand. Rippberger also executive produced the drama “Our Son” starring Luke Evans and Billy Porter, which had its World Premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival, was picked up by Vertical Entertainment and released in theaters December 2023.
Previously, he directed and produced the horror film “Those Who Walk Away” starring BooBoo Stewart and prior to that directed and produced the Harlem drama, “Strive,” starring Danny Glover. Both were released theatrically and received dozens of accolades worldwide.
Rippberger has also directed and produced critically-acclaimed documentaries, including “Public Enemy Number One” from Executive Producer ICE-T, exploring the U.S. war on drugs, along with “7 Days in Syria”, an exploration into the human side of the war in Aleppo, Syria. 7 Days in Syria was personally championed by Angelina Jolie, screened at Britain’s House of Lords, to senior members of the U.N., and was released on Hulu and Amazon.
Rippberger is a member of the Producers Guild of America and is on the PGA's Social Impact Entertainment Task Force. In addition to heading SIE Films, Rippberger is the founder and co-executive director of SIE Society, a leading global alliance of Social Impact Entertainment filmmakers. His second published book, “The Power of Storytelling: Social Impact Entertainment”, is available through book sellers everywhere.
William Nix
Founder, Co-Executive Director
William Nix, Chairman/CEO, Creative Projects Group® is a Producer with extensive experience in the entertainment, media, sports, and intellectual property fields. 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 Diversity, Education, Independent Film, Documentary and Animation Committees. 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.
Rebecca Graham Forde
Founder, Head of Strategy & Development
Rebecca is an Executive Producer and Writer, and her work spans across Commercials, Television, New Media, and Publishing. She has spent much of her career creating and developing work in the non-fiction space and has produced hundreds of hours of compelling TV for Discovery Channel, OWN, CBS, A&E, and History Channel. After many years of uncovering amazing true stories in her non-fiction work, Rebecca founded GRANDI STORIE, Inc. to develop these “great stories” in the non-fiction and narrative space. Currently, she has partnered with major production companies in Los Angeles to execute these visions. A Colby College alumni, Rebecca started her career in Boston, producing commercials for brand giants Chevrolet, Fidelity Investments, Pizzeria Uno, and Howard Johnson Hotels. Rebecca is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at Mount Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles. Rebecca is a member of the Producers Guild of America, having once served as a Vice-President of the Guild and, most recently, Co-Chair of the Education Committee. She is a long-standing Power of Diversity workshop mentor and a founding member of the PGA Social Impact Entertainment Task Force. She is a WGA West member and serves on the Producers Executive Peer Group Committee for the TV Academy. Rebecca is represented by UTA.
Brian Walker
Head of Impact Stategy
Brian Walker is the CEO of Picture Motion, a social advocacy and marketing company that leads award winning social impact campaigns for entertainment, storytelling, and cultural works. Brian also currently serves on the board of Color Congress, an ecosystem-builder that is committed to organizations led by people of color that serve nonfiction filmmakers, leaders, and audiences of color across the United States and US islands. In 2013 Brian joined Participant Media, where he directed social impact and digital strategy for the TEACH and He Named Me Malala campaigns focused on education, inclusion, and access. After his time at Participant Media, Brian served as the first Culture and Entertainment Advocacy Director at Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization. In this role, Brian led the development of the Hollywood Culture Project, an initiative to change the rules in Hollywood, ensuring accurate, diverse, and multi-dimensional portrayals of Black people on television and throughout the entertainment and media landscape. Most recently, Brian served as a Stakeholder Engagement Leader with the Enterprise Diversity & Inclusion group at The Walt Disney Company. In his role, he advised senior corporate leaders and business unit leaders from across Disney’s family of brands on their cultural and social justice competency development and on strategic external relations with a specific focus on multicultural stakeholders and communities. Brian is a graduate of Howard University School of Business where he earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in Business Management, and from Howard University School of Law where he focused his studies on civil rights, intellectual property, and social enterprise.
Julie Davitz
Head of Impact Measurement
Julie Davitz is an internationally recognized impact leader with over 20 years in the nonprofit and for profit social impact sectors. Prior to founding +Media Solutions, Inc she was Head of Impact Solutions for BNP Paribas/Bank of the West, the 8th largest private bank in the world, where she was responsible for developing the bank's strategic wealth efforts towards sustainability and impact. She had her own global consulting firm and worked with hundreds of organizations from the US to India to Africa. Her perspective and deep experience with nonprofits, for profit companies and UHNW philanthropists and investors has led to her being an in demand speaker and panel participant at major conferences. Julie recognizes the urgency of interest, the rise in viable solutions and the technological delivery mechanisms. Her vision is to connect these three to offer scalable actions in order to address our 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Tobias Deml
Founder, Head of Content & Programming
Tobias Deml is a social impact filmmaker from Vienna, Austria and co-founded the SIE Society. Tobias has most recently directed the HBO Max docu-series "Gaming Wall Street". Beyond that. he’s shot thirteen feature films and helmed more than 100 projects as cinematographer, director or producer. Tobias’ work has been distributed by the likes of HBO Max and Netflix, and premiered at festivals such as SXSW. He bridges the worlds of mainstream entertainment and impact research, taking part in impact-focused conferences such as the SBCC Summits in Indonesia and Morocco
Tobias has a long history with visual art. Since the age of 14, he worked as a 3D artist, photographer and graphic designer – completely self-taught. Throughout his Vienna high school years, he freelanced in the area of animation, print, advertising and visualization. After graduating with his thesis “Psychology of Group and Mass”, he served as a Holocaust Memorial servant for one year in Los Angeles and Montreal. Living among a foreign culture and seeing a bigger picture of the world inspired Tobias to become a filmmaker. He co-founded the production company Prodigium Pictures in 2011.
In 2012, Tobias had a near-death experience that led to a full personal and professional pivot towards Social Impact Entertainment. To find evidence for this mission, he went on to study film theory at UC Berkeley and co-founded the magazine Cinema of Change, partially based on his 80-page Berkeley thesis paper “Cinema of Change: The Persuasive Impact of Narrative Motion Picture on Individual and Society“.
Caroline Jacoby
Head of SBCC
Caroline Jacoby, MPH, has over 23 years of experience in behavior and social change communication with an emphasis on Maternal, Newborn and Child health, Family Planning, Nutrition, Child Marriage, Infectious Diseases and Entertainment Education through mass and community media and in schools. She is a senior program officer at Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs and lecturer for a graduate-level entertainment education course. She is currently supporting communication programs in Nepal to reduce Child Early and Forced Marriage and in West Africa to prevent Avian Influenza and Rabies. She also manages a Covid-19 Communication Network for Social and Behavior Change Resources.
Jane Brown
SBCC Key Advisor
Over 20 years of experience working at the Center for Communication Programs (CCP) in Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC). She has overseen and provided technical support to country programs throughout Africa and Asia addressing maternal child health, HIV/AIDS, malaria, reproductive health, Ebola and most recently COVID-19. My extensive experience includes the development of Entertainment Education programs using various forms of media. Currently working as the Deputy Project Director for USAID’s flagship Social and Behavior Change (SBC) project, Breakthrough ACTION. I co-lead CCP’s Gender Community of Practice and have had a lead role in the development and implementation of several of the Center’s key gender initiatives. In my former life, I was a radio and video producer.
Scott Pansky
Head of Corporate Partnerships
A nationally recognized leader in cause-related marketing, Scott Pansky is a co-founder and partner of Allison, where he leads the Nonprofit & Cause Marketing Group for the global integrated marketing and communications consultancy dedicated to driving growth, innovation, and positive change. Scott has more than thirty years’ experience working with brands on corporate social responsibility and thought leadership programs.
He has developed internal communication strategies, community outreach and national branding and entertainment partnership programs that have increased both revenues and reputation for his clients. Throughout his experience developing best-of-class cause-related campaigns, he has created proprietary methodologies to help corporations find the best possible focus for their cause-related efforts. He led the agency in creating a corporate “socialanthropy” platform – that nonprofit alliances and partnerships would resonate deeper with brand’s stakeholders
Scott’s work guiding nonprofit organizations on their public relations efforts, board trainings and cause development programs has helped to transform them by better understanding the needs and opportunities with corporations that have helped them serve as better partners.
In addition to his work at Allison, Scott is a frequent guest speaker, passionate educator, children’s book author (Playing Together in the Sandbox), and in addition to his role at SIE, Scott serves on the executive committee on the LAUSD Citizen’s Bond Oversite Committee, he co-chairs the Education and Workforce Development Committee for the LA Area Chamber of Commerce, chairs the San Diego State University’s Journalism Media and Studies Advisory Board, and serves on the advisory boards to the City Scholar Foundation and Kids in the Spotlight. He also serves on the board of directors for the Lymphoma Research Foundation and the Los Angeles Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. For more than 17 years, he has taught sponsorship and cause-related marketing through the UCLA Extension program and launched the San Diego annual Cause Marketing Conference more than 25 years ago.
Jeff Chao
Head of Finance
Jeff Chao is the Vice President of Finance and Business Development at Digital Domain. In his role, he connects Content Strategy, Business Affairs and Finance to identify new and innovative business opportunities that accelerate the growth of Digital Domain’s global studio. Jeff is a strategic thinker who listens to clients with the aim of achieving a win-win partnership. His extensive background in finance and sales drives him to align corporate goals with those of clients.
Prior to joining Digital Domain, Jeff was Senior Director, Finance at Participant Media. There he managed film investments for a $250 million film fund between Participant Media and Image Nation Abu Dhabi. He had direct involvement in investments for over 31 films with budgets ranging from $2 million to $75 million, such as “Lincoln,” “The Help,” “The Hundred-Foot Journey,” “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel I & II,” “Contagion” and “Snitch.” In addition, Jeff supervised the growth of Participant Media’s Digital division from a blog to a Multi-Channel Network with 10 million views per month. He also aided in the acquisition and set up of Pivot Television, a cable network for social good that won an Emmy award for Joseph Gordon Levitt’s “Hit Record.”
Jeff is part of a dynamic global team at Digital Domain.
Ed Lantz
Head of AR, VR, and Dome Experiences
Ed Lantz is an entrepreneur, entertainment technology engineer and immersive experience designer. Ed left aerospace engineering in 1990 to transform old-style planetariums into immersive visualization environments, designing over a dozen dome theaters worldwide including the Library of Alexandria’s Planetarium in Egypt, Domodigital at Papalote Museo del Niño in Mexico City, and the National Space Centre planetarium in Leicester, UK. Ed sometimes refers to digital domes as “digital temples of transformation” for their ability to combine art and science into compelling immersive journeys and performances. His company Vortex Immersion Media develops themed entertainment attractions and immersive and interactive experiences for Fortune 500 brands and top artists and musicians. Vortex also operates the Vortex Dome, the first commercial immersive media production studio and events venue located in downtown Los Angeles.
Ed believes in the power of art to facilitate positive transformation on personal, local and global scales. He has directed and produced numerous live transformational participatory events combining theater, dance, music and immersive projections including Matthew Fox’s The Cosmic Mass. Vortex’s latest production, James Hood’s Mesmerica, is currently screening in over a dozen digital domes and offers visitors a “journey into your own mind.”
Heather Doggett
Head of Interactive Experiences
Heather Doggett is the Founder and CEO of Immerse Universe, a production company informed by conservation behavior change science and integrating the very best in experience design to create measurable mission impact.
Heather brings 27 years of experience in museum leadership with an extensive background in leading diversity and inclusion initiatives, experience design, revenue generation, conservation education, and operations.
As a member of executive and senior leadership teams, Heather has led and championed strategic planning, exhibit design, event design, theatrical productions, guest experience initiatives, DEIJ strategy, conservation psychology strategy, audience evaluation, and interpretive planning at complex and matrixed organizations including the National Aquarium, Loveland Living Planet Aquarium (LLPA), Riverbanks Zoo and Garden, Tampa Zoo at Lowry Park, and the Santa Barbara Zoo.
She is specifically known for integrating art and science to create exceptional guest experiences, forming unique partnerships, hiring high performing teams, and demonstrating servant leadership while eagerly taking on challenging projects.
Dana Dveris
Head of Community Engagement
Nancy Cushing-Jones
Editor in Chief, SIE Voices
Nancy brings extensive experience in managing publishing-related services, including content and brand development, and freelance editorial work. She also develops filmed content for CPG media projects, such as feature films, TV series, and documentaries.
As a Division President at Universal Studios for 23 years, Nancy managed global brand franchises and is an expert in print and digital publishing. She pioneered the "tie-in" publishing business and was instrumental in developing the licensing of video game rights to filmed entertainment properties. Nancy generated 25% of the total revenue for the Consumer Products Group at Universal and led numerous creative and corporate projects.
Nancy was the first female division president in Universal's history. She has produced New York Times best-selling books and worked closely with major film and TV production companies. She also co-founded two start-ups, Broadthink and BroadLit, offering branding, business development, and marketing services, and publishing romance novels.
Nancy has served on various professional panels and boards, including the Human Rights Watch Los Angeles Committee, the Aspen Film Institute Advisory Board, and the American Friends Service Committee.
SIE Advisory Board
