| International Documentary Association

Janki (she/her) is at the forefront of everything ad-related, serving as the Advertising Manager at IDA. Janki holds a unique background in the digital space, coupled with an MBA, she comes with 7+ years of robust digital marketing experience. She moved to Los Angeles from India in 2022 and is on a mission to contribute innovative solutions to IDA's endeavors.

Cielo Saucedo is an disabled artist from a family of migrant farm workers. They work with computer generated imagery, non-fiction writing and sculpture to disrupt notions of humanism and make space for disabled mind-bodies and ecologies. Technology mediates their artistic production with the wax and wane of their ability. From this direct response to their body, an unprivileged mutuality between ecological space and virtual experience is offered. In their work video games trace histories of oil infrastructure and birch trees are woven into sand dunes. They have shown work in New York, Chicago, London and Quito. They participated in the artist collective SIQ (Sick in Quarters) and are a founding member of W.E., an ecological action group started in Chicago. They received their BFA from School of the Art Institute, Chicago and are a MFA candidate at UCLA.

Mary is responsible for managing IDA's finances and operations. Before joining IDA, Mary had a lengthy career as a public radio and television producer in San Diego. During her tenure at KPBS, she launched and managed daily shows and produced arts docs, live performance specials, and current affairs talk shows. She currently lives in Sherman Oaks with her documentary filmmaker husband, her son, and their two tuxedo cats.

Catalina (she/her) joined the IDA team in October 2022 as the Marketing and Communications Coordinator.

Katy Hurley is currently the Funds Coordinator at IDA. Prior to working at IDA, she worked at Jane Doe Films, an award-winning production company that specializes in investigative documentaries such as The Hunting Ground and The Invisible War. In 2019, she graduated from California State University Long Beach and was a student in the nonfiction filmmaking program. She was an HFPA grant recipient for her short student film and was selected for Best Documentary at the CSU Media Arts Festival.

Ranell Shubert is the Nonfiction Access Initiative Funds Program Manager at the International Documentary Association, a movement aimed at narrative change through building power, community, and increasing opportunities for nonfiction media-makers who identify as disabled. She also teaches Podcast Production at the University of Southern California. Prior to joining IDA and NAI, she produced the Whats Up With Docs Podcast and also worked with the 1IN4 Coalition creating artist development programs for creatives with disabilities.

The son of two journalists, Colin Arp (he/him) was born and raised in the greater Los Angeles area and has always had a deep love of all things storytelling. He began his early career in writing, but with an additional hobby in amateur photography, it was inevitable that he eventually found his way into filmmaking.

Armando Zamudio (he/him) is a first-generation Mexican-American with parents from Guanajuato, Mexico. He is a filmmaker and film lover from Chicago, IL, and studied film at Columbia College Chicago. Upon graduating, he joined Cinema/Chicago, where he began his journey in the film festival circuit. He joined Sundance and, soon after, many more film festivals across the country. he got to travel to Salt Lake City, Seattle, New York City, and finally Los Angeles, where he’s resided and now excited to be part of IDA, helping documentaries have a platform. Over the years he has grown and built a strong bond with filmmakers and the film community through screenings and public programming. He hopes to continue to build stronger bonds with you and documentarians like himself.

Melissa (she/her) moved to L.A. to join IDA by way of her native New York, Philadelphia, an earlier brief stint in L.A., Washington D.C., and Chicago--in that order. As such, she no longer has much of an accent, but she does know an unusual lot about regional sandwiches. She holds an M.A. in Public History and became a grant writer quite by happy accident. She loves bookstores, riding her bike, old movies, Bruce Springsteen and the Grateful Dead, and she lives for dogs – especially her super senior basset hound, Sue.

Maria Santos joined the International Documentary Association as the Funds Program Officer in September 2022. She oversees all of the funding grants and provides year-round creative and strategic support to all IDA grantees. Previously, she was the Manager of Labs and Artist Support at the Sundance Documentary Film Program, since September 2020. During her time there, she was the lead on working with International Artists, primarily in Central and South America.

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