our TEAM
Sahar Driver
Co-Founder + Co-Executive Director
Sahar is a founding Co-Executive Director of Color Congress. She is a veteran documentary impact strategist, field builder, and researcher. Her career has focused on social and cultural transformation through nonfiction storytelling. She has led impact campaigns and strategy for over two-dozen documentaries, independently and with Active Voice. She has designed and led impact trainings and grantmaking programs to support impact producers and filmmakers of color with Firelight Media. She worked with Doc Society to update the second edition of their Impact Field Guide and wrote the 2019 Impact Hi5 case studies. Today she is on the Doc Society Inc US Board of Directors, the Picture Motion Advisory Board, and was a 2022 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow and a 2021 Rockwood / JustFilms Fellow. In 2020 she authored the Ford Foundation commissioned report: Beyond Inclusion: The Critical Role of People of Color in the U.S. Documentary Ecosystem.
sahar @ colorcongress.org
Sonya Childress
Co-Founder + Co-Executive Director
Sonya is a founding Co-Executive Director of Color Congress. A veteran film strategist, she spent two decades devising impact campaigns and distribution strategies at Active Voice, California Newsreel and Firelight Media, where she piloted a fellowship for impact producers of color. As a Senior Fellow with the Perspective Fund, she examined issues of ethics, equity and accountability in the documentary field. She is a founding member of the Documentary Accountability Working Group, a board member of the Center for Cultural Power, a working group member for ‘The Lens Reflected’ study, a 2015 Rockwood JustFilms Fellow, a recipient of the 2022 Leading Light Award from Doc NYC, and a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
sonya @ colorcongress.org
Jina Chung
Development Director
Jina Chung is a veteran fundraiser with nearly fifteen years of supporting independent media. She is a fierce advocate of Community-Centric Fundraising and helps mission-driven organizations use fundraising models rooted in equity and social justice to support their vision. She has worked in many different roles, including leading a progressive audio journalism organization, Frequencies of Change Media, and serving as the Senior Director of Development & Partnerships at the International Documentary Association (IDA). As a fundraising consultant, she has a strong affinity and passion for building and implementing systems to expand fundraising capacity for small visual and media arts organizations. Outside work, Jina enjoys spending her free time collecting stationery and journaling.
jina @ colorcongress.org
Michelle Y. Hurtubise
Membership & Events Manager
Michelle has advocated for narrative sovereignty for diverse storytellers throughout her PhD journey in Visual Anthropology at Temple University and brings this passion to Color Congress as the Membership and Events Manager. She co-founded and developed Kin Theory, an Indigenous media makers database, and helped coordinate the 4th World Media Lab. With a 2022-2023 Fulbright Fellowship, she collaborated with the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and Vtape in Toronto. Originally from San Francisco, Michelle (Cantonese American, Irish and French descent) did human rights and media work in Rio de Janeiro as part of her MA at New York University, received an MFA from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, worked with the Center for Artistic Activism, and with the Center for Media, Culture and History.
michelle @ colorcongress.org
Andrea Ayala
Finance + Operations Coordinator
Andrea is a documentary impact professional, writer, and filmmaker. She’s a proud first-generation Mexican American, raised in the midwest on stolen Anishinabewaki land and in northern Mexico. After completing her undergraduate program in Comparative Cultures & Politics, she started her career in film and nonprofit advocacy in Los Angeles. Andrea brought her passion for generating social change and empowering historically marginalized creatives to the launch of Color Congress and has been part of the organization ever since. She speaks Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and English, enjoys dreaming up music videos, and loves to frequent hi-fi listening third spaces.
andrea @ colorcongress.org