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Meet Our Team
Dr. Juliette M. Storr - Producer & Director
Dr. Juliette Storr is a professor of communications at Pennsylvania State University. She is the author of the book Journalism in a Small Place: Making Caribbean News Relevant, Comprehensive and Independent and producer and director of two documentary films, “So, You Think You Is Woman Hey? Gender Equality in the Bahamas,” which examines normative notions of gender equality in the Bahamas including gender discrimination
gender-based violence, gender inequality and the law, and gender equality as human rights, and the award-winning documentary “Bearing Witness: Breaking Secrets and Silence,” which won two awards at FLOW Festival and Film Market, Biggest Social Impact and Best Lo/No Budget Documentary. “Bearing Witness” tells the story of a survivor of child molestation and examines a culture of rape. Dr. Storr has also worked as a television producer in the Bahamas and in the United States where her work has been featured in Michigan, Indiana, and Florida on major television networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX. Her scholarship focuses on international and intercultural communication with an emphasis on post-colonial media systems of the Caribbean, journalism, race, class, gender, African diaspora, and environmental sustainability. A former journalist who has worked in print and broadcast media in the Bahamas and the United States, she has trained journalists in the Caribbean and has worked as a communication consultant for small businesses in the Caribbean. In addition, she has taught in China and the Caribbean and has published numerous articles and book chapters and presented research at national, regional, and international conferences.
Dr. Tia Smith - Executive Producer
Dr. Tia Smith is a writer and documentary filmmaker. Her work centers on joy as intervention and resilience in the lived experiences of Africana people in the United States and the Caribbean. Dr. Smith has collaborated and consulted with her colleagues on many research projects, conferences, academic papers, and films. Her first film, Baby Dolls: Preserving Culture in New Orleans documents the
history of the tradition of the baby dolls New Orleans masking tradition and their impact on breaking barriers in gender and their significance to the community and culture of New Orleans Mardi Gras tradition. The film was screened at the Louisiana Endowment for Humanities and the Tennessee Williams Festival. Dr. Smith’s second project, Permission to Wine: Identity, Gender and Performance in Trinidad Carnival takes a reflexive look at the consent and how it is negotiated and understood across intercultural, cross cultural and intracultural experiences. In addition to documentary film, Dr. Smith trained journalists and media professionals throughout the Caribbean and Latin America on covering taboo topics such as child sexual abuse, gender-based violence and human trafficking. Dr. Smith has lived and worked in diverse cultural and learning environments in the United States, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Brazil, and Trinidad & Tobago giving her first-hand knowledge of the sensitive nature and challenges associated with issues of media, diversity, and inclusiveness. Her current project looks at transgenerational resilience to environmental racism in Louisiana’s river parishes.
Consultants
Bahamas Psychological Association
Dr. Wendy Fernander and Dr. Ava Thompson