| Speakers |
| Jillian Arnold MFA Recording and Workflow Engineer / President of Local 695 / IATSE AI Subcommittee Chair Self Employed / IATSE Jillian Arnold is the IATSE Artificial Intelligence Sub-committee Chair for the 2024 IATSE-AMPTP negotiations. She is the first female president in Local 695’s ninety year history. She is a recording and workflow engineer for live events, adding the Oscar’s, Emmys, MTV’s VMAs, Grease Live, Ted Talks, NFL Football and more to her list of credits. Jillian started her career working in aerospace for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory doing video engineering for over a dozen missions. Jillian’s focus is on technical solutions that create a tool box for our labor workforce, while keeping in mind contractual policy and the bigger scope of the next generation of television and film production. | |
| Stefan Aronsen MFA Co-Founder Balanced Breakfast Stefan Aronsen holds a master’s degree in Graphic Design from The Academy of Art in San Francisco. He has worked for Lucasfilm, Stitcher Radio, Magnifi, and indie record labels. In 2013, he founded Balanced Breakfast, a community supporting musicians and strengthening the local music scene. He currently serves as Senior Marketing Manager at Hilton, demonstrating the intersection of hospitality and entertainment. Stefan is passionate about music and contributes as a promoter, booker, photographer, podcaster, DJ, and freelance designer. His mission is to help musicians succeed by creating spaces for education, support, and collaboration. Although he doesn't create music, he released one song and focuses on empowering the industry by bridging gaps and fostering connections. | |
| Michael Bang MA Adjunct Faculty, Music Department Ohlone College Michael Bang is a Bay Area musician, composer, performer and educator. He has taught courses at San Francisco State University, coached rock and jazz ensembles, and teaches private students in guitar, piano, drums, ukulele, mandolin and banjo, as well as music theory, songwriting and production. Active in the local music scene, Michael plays with dance grunge band Tell Me Tell Me, indie rock band The Riot Professor, organizes various jazz combos, performs his own solo material, and even writes classical chamber music. | |
| Cristina Banks PhD Associate Director, California Labor Lab University of California, Berkeley Dr. Banks is the Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces, a global research center at the University of California, Berkeley whose purpose is to gather together all known science across disciplines regarding employee health and well-being and to translate findings into a new organizational template for healthy workplaces. In collaboration with Dr. Sheldon Zedeck, Dr. Banks leads a team of 30 researchers spanning multiple disciplines and 20+ affiliates in collecting and integrating known scientific findings and creating new research programs to advance our knowledge in this area. Dr. Banks is also a Senior Lecturer at the Haas School of Business where she has taught Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management for 30 years. | |
| Loryn Barbeau MM Holistic Vocal and Performance Coach Self Employed A native San Franciscan Loryn Barbeau is a holistic vocal and performance coach and singer. Loryn helps singers fully express themselves through their voice by teaching a healthy, sustainable, holistic approach to singing and performing, informed by Eastern and Western practices, creating a unique and magnetic sound and presence. Loryn began her own singing life 35 years ago as a classical singer earning a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Music from the SF Conservatory of music and later moved into the contemporary music world forming Americana Band Gutter Swan with guitarist Steve Egelman. Loryn has also been teaching yoga for performers and singers for 17 years. | |
| Michelle Beltran Director, Continuing Education Program Center for Occupational and Environmental Health Michelle Meyer is Director of Continuing Education at the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH). She began her health and safety career when she joined COEH in 2017 after working at multiple tech start-ups in the San Francisco Bay Area. Michelle graduated from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in 2013. | |
| Joel Burges PhD Associate Professor of English and Visual & Cultural Studies, Director of Film & Media Studies University of Rochester Joel Burges is the author of Out of Sync & Out of Work: History and the Obsolescence of Labor in Contemporary Culture. He is presenting from a new book project, Television and the Work of Writing. He is also at work on The Close-Up: A History, co-authored with Allison Cooper, and directs the digital annotation platform Mediate at the University of Rochester. | |
| John Thornton Caldwell MFA, PhD Distinguished Research Professor University of California, Los Angeles John T. Caldwell, UCLA Distinguished Research Professor, Cinema & Media Studies, received the SCMS Distinguished Pedagogy Award (2018); 2 NEA Fellowships (1979, 1985); a Bauhaus University Fellowship (2012), and an Annenberg Senior Fellowship (2012). His books include: Specworld (UC Press, 2023); Production Culture (Duke, 2008), Televisuality (Rutgers, 1995), New Media: Digitextual Theories (Routledge, 2003), and Production Studies (co-edited, 2009). His ethnographic and experimental films have premiered at the Margaret Mead Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam, and the Sundance Film Festival (2002); and have been broadcast on SBS-TV/Australia, WTTW-PBS/Chicago, and WGBH-PBS/Boston. A critical review of his ethnographic projects is at: https://cinema.ucla.edu/events/2024/10/26/border-wars-the-radical-ethnography-of-john-t-caldwell A media retrospective of Caldwell's award-winning films, including Rancho California (2002), Land Hacks (2020), and Freak Street (1989), was recently exhibited by the UCLA Film & Television Archive at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and can be viewed at: https://vimeo.com/showcase/11426869 | |
| Deborah Cullinan Vice President for the Arts Stanford University Deborah Cullinan is a seasoned arts and culture leader who has spent years mobilizing communities through arts and culture. She joined Stanford University in early 2022 as the first full-time vice president for the arts. Previously, she was CEO of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), where she launched several bold new programs, engagement strategies, and civic coalitions. Prior to joining YBCA in 2013, she was the executive director of San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts. She is a co-founder of CultureBank, board member of the Community Arts Stabilization Trust and EPACENTER, and recently served as co-chair of the San Francisco Arts Alliance, and vice chair of the Yerba Buena Gardens Conservancy. She was the inaugural National Field Leader in Residence at Arizona State University’s National Accelerator for Cultural Innovation and a former innovator-in-residence at the Kauffman Foundation. She is a member of the California Arts Council’s Creative Economy Workgroup and she serves as an advisor to a number of arts and culture initiatives including the NeuroArts Blueprint, One Nation/One Project’s “Arts for Everybody” campaign, and Californians for the Arts. She served on the San Francisco Economic Recovery Task Force and on Governor Gavin Newsom’s Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery. Her work is focused on integrating art and creativity into the infrastructure of our communities. | |
| Joely Fisher Secretary-Treasurer and Co-Chair, National Government Affairs and Public Policy Committee SAG-AFTRA Joely Fisher, elected SAG-AFTRA Secretary-Treasurer in 2021 and re-elected in 2023, continues her mother Connie Stevens’ legacy as both a performer and union leader. As Secretary-Treasurer and Finance Committee Chair, she played a key role in securing SAG-AFTRA’s future headquarters, a move projected to save the union millions, and serves on the TV/Theatrical Negotiating Committee, shaping policies that impact nearly 160,000 members. Born into a showbiz family, Fisher gained fame for her Golden Globe-nominated role as Paige Clark on Ellen, followed by starring roles in Normal, Ohio, Wild Card, Desperate Housewives, ’Til Death, and Last Man Standing. Her film credits include The Mask, Mixed Nuts, and Inspector Gadget, as well as indie films including Perfect Prey, Slingshot, Killing Winston Jones, and Search Engines. A seasoned stage performer, she made her Broadway debut as Rizzo in Grease and later earned acclaim as Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Alongside acting, Fisher is a lifelong singer who has performed worldwide, including on a USO tour with Bob Hope and at the Kennedy Center for President George H.W. Bush. In recent years, she has expanded into directing, helming short films, music videos, and socially conscious PSA campaigns, with her feature directorial debut, Oliver Storm, on the horizon. Her memoir, Growing Up Fisher, explores the profound impact of losing her sister, Carrie Fisher, on her creative journey. Married for over two decades to cinematographer Christopher Duddy, she is a proud mother of five and continues to champion the arts both on and off screen. | |
| Kate Fortmueller PhD Associate Professor Georgia State University Kate Fortmueller is Associate Professor of Film and Media History in the School of Film, Media & Theatre and affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Georgia State University. Her work focuses on labor and crises in the U.S. media industries. She is the author of Below the Stars: How the Labor of Working Actors and Extras Shapes Media Production (University of Texas Press, 2021), Hollywood Shutdown: Production, Distribution, and Exhibition in the Time of Covid (University of Texas Press, 2021) and the co-editor of Hollywood Unions (Rutgers University Press, 2025). She is co-authoring a book with Miranda Banks, Hollywood Walkout: Creative Labor in the Age, which about how changes to labor and production cultures led to the 2023 dual strikes (forthcoming from University of California Press). | |
| Willy Friedman TV Producer Self Employed Willy Friedman is an Emmy-Nominated TV & Film Producer. For the last ten years, he has been producing half-hour comedies in New York City, for Netflix, HBO, Max, and Showtime. He produced the HBO show HIGH MAINTENANCE, managing a crew of over 100, and delivering four seasons of the show on schedule, on budget, and to rave reviews. In addition to his work in Television, he has experience developing, producing, delivering and overseeing short and feature length, narrative and documentary films, as well as music videos, commercials and web-series. With an extensive knowledge of physical production, he relishes being at the intersection of the creative and logistical. He specializes in facilitating and nurturing creative vision, fostering a supportive and inclusive working environment and working within and right up to the constraints of budget and schedule. He is driven by a fundamental humanism that is reflected both in the content he creates and in how it’s made, and he firmly believes that the two are deeply intertwined. Early in his career, in between working as an assistant director and production manager, he produced short films that screened and won awards at Venice, SXSW, New Directors/New Films and many other festivals and participated in the Sundance Creative Producing Summit. Most recently, he produced two seasons of SURVIVAL OF THE THICKEST, for Netflix/A24. | |
| Lily Janiak MA Theater Critic San Francisco Chronicle Lily Janiak joined the San Francisco Chronicle as theater critic in May 2016. Previously, her writing appeared in Theatre Bay Area, American Theatre, SF Weekly, the Village Voice and HowlRound. A Michigan native whose childhood also took her to Tennessee and Texas, she holds a BA in theater studies from Yale and an MA in drama from San Francisco State. She served on the jury for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. | |
| Erica Knox Research & Public Policy Director Writers Guild of America West Erica Knox is the Research & Public Policy Director for the Writers Guild of America West, overseeing the Guild's strategic research and public policy campaigns, including advocating for increased competition in the entertainment industry. Erica previously worked as a Research & Policy Analyst for three years at the Guild. Prior to the WGAW, Erica worked as a Policy Advocate for the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, using her technical skills to advance racial equity. | |
| Madeline Lane-McKinley PhD Adjunct Professor University of California, Santa Cruz and Pacific Northwest College of Art Madeline Lane-McKinley is the author of Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times (Common Notions Press, 2022), and the co-author of Fag/Hag (Rosa Press, 2024). Her upcoming book from Haymarket Press is entitled Solidarity with Children: An Essay Against Adult Supremacy. She is an editor of Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry, teaches for the Writing Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and for the graduate program Critical Studies at Pacific Northwest College of the Arts. | |
| John Macintosh PhD Lecturer University of Maryland, College Park John Macintosh is a lecturer in English at the University of Maryland, College Park. His current research focuses on literary representations of labor in the service sectors. His writing on labor and finance have appeared Contemporary Literature, Finance Aesthetics: A Critical Glossary, Polygraph, Post45, and Studies in the Novel. | |
| Annie McClanahan PhD Associate Professor University of California, Irvine Annie McClanahan is an Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, where she is also faculty co-director of UCI-LIFTED, UCI’s prison education program, the chair of the Irvine Faculty Association, and the co-director for the UC-wide Marxist Institute for Research. Her scholarly research explores the relationship between economy and culture, the intellectual history of orthodox and heterodox economics, and Marxist-feminist theory. She is the author of Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and 21st Century Culture (Stanford UP, 2016) and the forthcoming Beneath the Wage: Tips, Tasks, and Gigs in the Age of Service Work (Zone Books). | |
| Jack Plotnick Actor/Director/Writer/Teacher Self Employed Jack is an award-winning actor, director and performance coach with regular and recurring roles on Grace and Frankie, Z Nation, The Mentalist, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Reno 911, and Drawn Together, plus appearances in the films Meet the Fockers, Down With Love, Rubber, and Gods and Monsters. Jack co-wrote and directed the feature film Space Station 76 and Broadway musical Disaster! (NYT Critics Pick!), and executive produced/starred in the feature film (and cult hit!) Girls Will Be Girls. | |
| Victor Rubin MCP, PhD Policy Researcher and Consultant Victor Rubin is a consultant to the California Labor Laboratory on the opportunities for policy change arising from the activities of the Lab. He retired in 2022 as former Vice President for Research at PolicyLink, a national nonprofit institute advancing equitable policy change. He led engagements regarding strategies for inclusive economic growth in several cities and communities of practice with officials and advocates, including the Equitable Innovation Economies group with the Pratt Center for Community Development and the Southern Cities for Economic Inclusion with the Annie E. Casey Foundation. He was guest editor of the November 2019 special issue of the Community Development Innovation Review on “Transforming Community Development through Arts and Culture” and was guest editor of the special issue on “Regional Equity” of the Journal of the Community Development Society (2011 and 2018). Recent memberships include the American Planning Association’s Social Equity Task Force (2018-2020), the California Planning Roundtable, the Design and Health Leadership Group of the American Institute of Architects (2015-2018), the board of directors of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (2018-2021) and the Advisory Council for the UCSF Center for Community Engagement. In 1999-2000 he was Director of the Office of University Partnerships at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was formerly Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his MCP (1975) and PhD. (1986.) | |
| Maureen Russell MA, MLIS, CPhil Archivist University of California, Los Angeles. Dept. of Ethnomusicology Maureen Russell is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Ethnomusicology, specializing in audiovisual archiving, oral history, and information literacy and research skills. In addition, Russell is Archivist at the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, one of the largest and oldest ethnographic audiovisual archives in North America. She has written two critically acclaimed books about television and film "Highlander: The Complete Watcher’s Guide" (1998) and "Days of Our Lives: A Complete History of the Long-running Soap Opera" (1995). Since 2012, she has been the editor for "Music Reference Services Quarterly’s" “Off the Beaten Path” column, publishing 36 articles (MRSQ is a peer-reviewed journal published by Taylor and Francis). She is also the editor for "Ethnomusicology Review’s" “From the Archives” column (Ethnomusicology Review is a multilingual, refereed publication for interdisciplinary music scholarship and the graduate student publication of the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology). Russell was the 2021 UCLA Librarian of the Year. | |
| Laura Stock MPH Director Emeritus Labor Occupational Health Program Laura Stock, MPH retired as Director of the Labor Occupational Health Program in February 2025. She continues to serve as Director of Community Engagement with the California Labor Lab. During her time with LOHP, Laura administered LOHP’s programs providing training, research support, materials development and technical assistance for workers, employers, health professionals, and the general public. She also provided direction to staff on translating research findings to practice and to public policy (R2P2P). In her 30+ years at LOHP, Laura developed various training programs and educational materials on occupational safety and health issues and provided technical assistance and consultation to workers, unions, joint labor/management committees, employers, policymakers and others on how to set up comprehensive and effective health and safety programs. | |
| Edward Yelin PhD Edward A Dickson Emeritus Professor; Director, California Labor Laboratory University of California, San Francisco Dr. Edward Yelin has been researching the relationship between work and health for more than four decades. His research has focused on how persons with health problems can maintain employment and, conversely, how changes in the nature of work affect the health of the working age population. He is the Director of the California Labor Lab, a NIOSH Center of Excellence for Total Worker Health® and Principal Investigator of the California Work and Health Survey, one of the Lab's research projects. Dr. Yelin received his PhD from the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC, Berkeley and has been on the faculty of the Department of Medicine and Philip R Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies since 1980. | |
