Our Team
Jessica Jones | Director, Editor
Jessica Jones is an Emmy® (CA-regional) nominated documentary filmmaker and editor. She served as an assistant editor for For Our Children, A Fragile Trust, A New Color, and as an additional editor for Voices Rising: The Music Behind Wakanda Forever. She has edited numerous short documentaries that have appeared in The New York Times, BBC, KQED, and other outlets. In 2021, she completed the short film On the Pulse of Life, which screened at the Smithsonian FUTURES exhibit and at numerous festivals nationwide. In 2023, she co-edited, Born for This, a documentary addressing Black maternal health and birth equity. She was the 2011 George Stoney Fellow at Working Films, a 2013 BAVC Mediamaker Fellow, a participant in the inaugural 2020 Re-Take Oakland fellowship program, and a 2023-24 Sundance Documentary Contributing Editor Fellow.
Debra Wilson | Producer
Debra is an award-winning director and producer. Her directorial debut with Butch Mystique massed several awards and aired on Showtime. She also followed up with the short documentary Jumpin’ the Broom aired on Showtime. She has produced such films as Mississippi Damned, two ITVS Futurestates shorts Crossover and Ant, and The Lake Merritt Monster, supported by San Francisco FilmHouse. And in 2022, Debra produced the National Endowment of the Arts docuseries Roots of American Culture, honoring the recipients of the National Heritage Fellows. Debra is an alum of the Sundance Producers Lab Intensive, BAVC National MediaMaker Fellow, and San Francisco FilmHouse Residency.
Benjamin Michel | Director of Photography
Benjamin Michel is an award-winning filmmaker of Haitian descent. He was born in Irvington, New Jersey and was exposed to a rich cultural heritage growing up. After a number of years in Florida, he pursued a career in motion pictures as a director, cinematographer, writer, and producer. His films often highlight the cultural and historical lives of people from different parts of the world. The structure of his films usually blends the classical tropes of storytelling with elements of surrealism. He's received inspiration from the work of auteurs such as Kenji Mizoguchi, Wong Kar-wai, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Raoul Peck. Benjamin's become known for creating unique, poetic and beautifully cinematic films.
Eriq Robinson | Composer
Eriq Robinson is a composer and bassist based in New York City. A Wesleyan University graduate, Eriq has performed with a collection of New York Free Jazz luminaries such as William Hooker and Ras Moshe Burnett. He is a working bassist for numerous up and coming Pop, R&B, and Hip Hop projects.
Theresa Navarro | Executive Producer
Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Theresa is a Pinay cultural worker and working mama whose career in media arts spans two decades. Prior to Catapult, she served as vice president of external affairs at American Documentary, the New York-based nonprofit behind Emmy Award-winning series ‘POV’ on PBS. An Independent Spirit Award-nominated producer, her credits include Chinatown sports documentary 9-Man (director Ursula Liang), Peabody Award-winning anthology series ‘America Reframed’ on WORLD Channel (supervising producer Carmen L. Vicencio), and sci-fi feminist feature Advantageous (director Jennifer Phang, producers Robert Chang, Jacqueline Kim, Ken Jeong, Moon Molson), which won the Special Prize for Collaborative Vision at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
Bianca Beyrouti, Associate Producer
Bianca Beyrouti is a proud Bay Area born-and-bred indie filmmaker who has spent the last decade bringing order to the chaos that is movie-making. By day she serves as the associate producer of the award-winning documentary series Independent Lens at ITVS; she moonlights as a producer of narrative short and features. Her most noteworthy producing credit is the award-winning indie feature Bring Me an Avocado, which is now streaming on Amazon Prime, Google Play, YouTube Movies, and Tubi. Her numerous short film credits have screened at film festivals throughout the U.S. and abroad. She has also served on various screening and review committees and panels, and is a proud member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and the Scary Cow filmmaking collective.
Suzette Burton | Associate Producer
Suzette Burton is an award winning filmmaker, producer, and editor. She has co- produced the documentary "Daddy Don't Go" directed by Emily Abt. The film is also executive produced by Omar Epps and Malik Yoba. It aired on the Starz network in 2015 and screened at over 30 film festivals, winning 8 best documentary awards. S
Saron Penrose | Graphic Design
Saron Penrose is a proud Bronx, NY native who creates compelling graphic design and illustration work. She designs impactful marketing collateral, branding, and social media content for professional brands including scientific manufacturers, pop culture websites, and television media. Saron uses vivid colors and a unique drawing style to create memorable designs that engage and educate audiences.
Hana Beach | Intern
Hana Beach is a graduate student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism where she is studying documentary filmmaking and investigative reporting.
Advisors Include:
Rita Baghdadi
Jennifer Crystal Chien
Nausheen Dadabhoy
Selina Lewis-Davidson
