Lauren Hollingsworth, Director and Producer

An award-winning theater director and photographer, Lauren is currently Senior Director of CNN Original Series where she oversees multiple shows, including Emmy-winning United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell, The Decades, Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal, Eleanor & Franklin, and Giuliani: What Happened to America’s Mayor? Before joining CNN, Lauren was Director of Content at MasterClass, where she executive produced and directed classes with Madeleine Albright & Condoleezza Rice, Gloria Steinem, Pharrell Williams, Tony Hawk, and Alex Honnold & Tommy Caldwell, among others. After receiving her MFA from USC in Film & Television Production, Lauren spent over a decade working as a producer and director on a variety of documentary series and films, including Dear… for Apple TV+, Welcome to Fairfax for Pivot TV/Participant Media, the CBS film Summer Dreams, the Emmy-nominated It Gets Better. 

 

Lyle Gamm, Executive Producer

As the SVP of CNN Original Series, Gamm has overseen multiple series including United Shades of America with Kamau Bell, First Ladies, The History of the Sitcom, This is Life with Lisa Ling and recently won an Emmy for his work on Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy. Previously the VP of Programming for Pivot TV/Participant Media, he was executive producer on projects such as Secret Lives of Americans, Truth and Power, Angry Planet, Welcome to Fairfax and HitRecord on TV. He has also worked closely with director-producer R.J. Cutler on several projects including The September Issue and Fish, and the series The Residents, American Candidate, 30 Days, and Dear… . Gamm also produced episodes of director Brett Morgan’s Peabody Award winning series Nimrod Nation, and director Alex Gibney’s The Human Behavior Experiments. 

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Inbal B. Lessner, Producer and Editor

An Emmy nominated producer and editor, Inbal was an additional editor on Natalie Portman's A Tale of Love and Darkness, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. She also produced and edited Brave Miss World, the documentary about Linor Abargil, who was raped 6 weeks before she won the Miss World pageant. The film was screened to members of U.S. Congress, received an Emmy nomination for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking, and is a Netflix Exclusive. Inbal was an Additional Editor on Davis Guggenheim's Teach, a 2-hour documentary special for CBS, and on Spent, his film about the "unbanked" in America. She edited and co-produced the internationally acclaimed I Have Never Forgotten You about Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, a Special Selection at the Berlin International Film Festival. 

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Jamara Ghalayini, Producer

Formerly a Senior Business Consultant with Deloitte Consulting, Jamara worked as a project manager for clients such as Warner Brothers Studios and Agilent Technologies, coordinating finance and development-based projects for these and other global entities. She founded and branded Pumpkinheads, a children?s luxury boutique, and is also a founding committee member for the March of Dimes babyLOVE event, now coined 'Celebration of Babies'. She has also organized fundraising for other non-profits including No Limits, Present Now, Operation School Bell, the Cedar Sinai Hospital NICU, and the Childrens' Action Network. 

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Stefanos Kafatos, Cinematographer

Stefanos Kafatos is a cinematographer with fifteen years' experience in documentary film and television. After receiving a Master of Fine Arts in Cinema-Television from the University of Southern California, he went to work for National Geographic, traveling around the world on the show Microkillers, documenting the effects of pathogens on communities around the world. He worked with director Morgan Spurlock on his film Mansome, and has captured intimate and emotional moments in documentary television for the Sundance Channel, the Travel Channel, ABC, TLC, MTV, Bravo and Discovery. 

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Daniel Lessner, Composer

Daniel Lessner has composed main themes and soundtracks for more than 70 films, documentaries and television shows. His most recent work includes the main themes and scores for ABC's 500 Questions, TBS' Americas Greatest Makers and America's Next Weatherman. Lessner collaborated with Hans Zimmer and Ben Harper on the Emmy Nominated Feature Documentary, Brave Miss World, which premiered on Netflix. He has created the themes and scores for History Channel's That's Impossible! as well as the score for the short film AWOL, starring David Morse and written by Shane Black, for which he won the silver medal for Best Soundtrack at the Park City Film Festival. Lessner has performed as a concert pianist in numerous television shows, and in the United Airlines' ads playing Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue accompanied by members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. ​