Andrea Krauss has been in the film industry for more than fifteen years. She has been with the Distributions and Acquisitions division of Here Media/Regent Entertainment for seven years, bringing her unique visual sensitivity, strong analytical skills, and cultural awareness to the company by screening and evaluating submissions for potential acquisition. She has also been instrumental in coordinating domestic and international film festivals for all of Here/Regent Films theatrical titles including the Academy Award® winning film Departures. Andrea is currently producing on a new LGBT series called Fabulous High which focuses on the lives of several high school characters facing the realities of teenagers today. In previous years, Andrea served as Director of Operations and Theatrical Sales for Scanbox Danmark in the International Sales office based in Los Angeles. A native of Germany, she resides in North Hollywood, California with her two cats, Meetz Van Noten and Taffy Davenport. Andrea is a rockstar, serving on both the Sidewalk and SHOUT juries for the second year in a row!

Tom Neff Oscar-Nominated and Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Tom Neff has over twenty-five years of experience in the film industry with over 25 national and international awards. An MFA graduate of the famed USC School of Cinema/Television, Tom’s films have ranged widely in subject and format, and he has worked in every film format from HD to 35mm to IMAX. He is a member of both the Academy of Motion Pictures and the Television Academy. Neff founded the Documentary Channel™, the nation’s first 24/7 channel dedicated exclusively to showing independent documentaries, which today airs on DISH and DirecTV to over 25 million viewers nationally. Neff Executive Produced all original documentary films and product created by the Channel, including the feature lengths and the Emmy-winning Shake Hands with the Devil, among many others. This past year, Neff has returned to teaching, and was Assistant Professor at MTSU (Middle TN State University). Neff founded The Documentary Film Foundation, a not-for-profit that aims to promote and expand the documentary genre. He has served as President of FilmNashville, an organization representing Nashville and dedicated to bringing film and television to the city. Neff also serves on the Nominating Committees for the Documentary Feature and Documentary Short Oscars and has been an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California School of Cinema/Television.

Rachel Raimist is a filmmaker who is best known for producing and directing the first documentary about women in hip-hop Nobody Knows My Name in 1999, which screened at South By Southwest, the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, San Jose Cinequest, Women in the Director’s Chair, and numerous other festivals. Raimist was also the videographer and co-editor of Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme, which aired on VH1 and was widely popular in global hip-hop communities. Her work has been written about in The NY Times, LA Weekly, and City Pages, as well as in books such as Vibe’s Hip Hop Divas and Jeff Chang’s Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop. She is co-editer of Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip-Hop Feminism Anthology and is one of the founding curators of B-Girl Be: A Celebration of Women in Hip-Hop at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 2009, the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) at the University of Minnesota honored Raimist by dedicating the department’s media center as the Rachel Raimist Feminist Media Center. Currently, she is the head of A/V at the Tuscaloosa Amphitheater, a 7,500 seat venue where her students produce all in-house IMAG video. Raimist holds a Ph.D in Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota and a B.A. and M.F.A. in Directing from UCLA’s School of Film and Television. She is an assistant professor in the department of Telecommunication and Film at the University of Alabama.