Emily Best is the founder and CEO of Seed&Spark, a platform built to make entertainment more diverse, inclusive, connected and essential. She has raised millions in investment and crowdfunding, secured large brand partnerships, and built a world-class team for Seed&Spark. In 2023, CNBC named Seed&Spark one of the top 200 fintech companies in the world.  In addition to her work at Seed&Spark, she has produced films, series and VR projects that have premiered at Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca and more. Her most recent film is RATIFIED, a feature documentary about the 100-year struggle to enshrine gender equality in the US Constitution, coming out late summer 2024. Alongside Christie Marchese at Kinema, Emily spearheaded an effort to launch The Distribution Playbook, a totally free and open- sourced field guide for independent filmmakers to succeed in distribution. Emily has taught crowdfunding, pitching and creative sustainability in more than 100 cities around the world.

From a young age, Jill Tew was destined for speculative fiction nerddom. She grew up watching Farscape, Hercules, and The Tribe every week, and always had the latest copy of Animorphs tucked in her backpack. Now she writes the kinds of stories she loved as a kid, with characters she wanted to see more of— Black heroines asking big questions, saving the world, and falling in love along the way.

A recovering business school graduate, Jill enjoys belting show tunes on the way to Target and baking in her spare time. She is also a co-host of Afronauts Podcast, which provides writing tips and community for Black aspiring speculative fiction writers. Her debut novel, a YA dystopian romance titled THE DIVIDING SKY, comes out from Joy Revolution (Penguin Random House) in 2024.

Jill lives in Atlanta with her family. She is represented by Jen Azantian of Azantian Literary Agency. Find her on Twitter and Instagram at @jtewwrites, and Tiktok at @jilltew.

Jack Monkey has been providing special makeup effects and creature creation for film and TV since 2010. Her credits include independent features like Crimson Cove and well-known series like The Walking Dead. She is currently the Makeup Department Head for Netherworld Haunted House where she also refurbishes and restores larger animatronics.

‍

Mandy is a digital marketing executive with 15+ years of experience in the media and film / entertainment industry. A graduate from the University of Georgia with a dual degree in Journalism and Film Studies, her experience started as a journalist and transitioned to publicity and marketing.Her resume now includes projects across film, TV, live entertainment, Broadway shows, digital content, consumer products, brands and more.A native of Atlanta, she worked in Los Angeles for 11 years leading 500+ marketing campaigns varying in size and scope across nearly every major Hollywood studio and brand, including Sci-Fi franchises like The Hunger Games, Alien, Planet of the Apes, Pacific Rim and X-Men/Wolverine films.
In 2022, she launched the Atlanta-based Mandy Kay Marketing offering clients an unmatched combination of LA experience with Southeast hometown pride and expertise.

An enthusiastic lover of film, TV, pop culture and experiences with the ability to strategize, oversee and implement an array of publicity, social media and influencer promotions, Mandy continues to work with iconic entertainment properties. Recent campaigns include films like Twisters, Mean Girls, Trolls Band Together, A Quiet Place: Day One and live entertainment shows like Monster Jam and Disney On Ice.

You can follow her company on Instagram @MandyKayMarketing.com or her personal account @MandyKayRodgers and learn more at www.mandykaymarketing.com

Brittany Myers is a sound technician working in film and television in Atlanta with a background in technical theatre and stagecraft. She's been a member of IATSE 479 for the past 6 years and has worked on a variety of productions including Marvel's Echo, She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel. She was born and raised in Georgia and worked in entertainment for the past 15 years.

OVHcloud, a global cloud provider that specializes in delivering industry-leading performance and cost-effective solutions to better manage, secure, and scale data. OVHcloud US delivers bare metal servers, hosted private cloud, hybrid, and public cloud solutions, recognized in 2020 as a "Strong performer" in Forrester's Hosted Private Cloud Services in N.A.(2Q2020) and as a Major Players in the 2022 IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service. OVHcloud manages 34 data centers across 12 sites on four continents, manufacturing its own servers, building its own data centers, and deploying its own fiber-optic global network to achieve maximum efficiency."