Expect the Unexpected: Building in Plan B
Speakers
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Co-Founder, Grain Media
2014 saw the completion of Orlando’s debut feature length documentary, Virunga, executively produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, and its global release as a Netflix Original production. Winning 27 International awards, it is the perfect showcase of his ability as a compelling storyteller with an cinematic eye for striking images and a nose for far reaching investigations.
Having previously directed award-winning films, spanning Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Arctic, and covering all manner of stories from a skateboard school in Afghanistan through to the tracking and arrest of pirates in West Africa, it’s no exaggeration to say that Orlando is one of the world’s leading young documentarians with a bright future ahead of him. He has been particularly lauded for his ability to draw out intimate personal stories and combine them with an eye for striking visual aesthetics.
He has been nominated for an Academy Award Award, a BAFTA, a Director’s Guild of America Award, a Producer’s Guild of America Award, an Independent Film Spirt Award, a Royal Television Society Award and has won over 40 other international film awards to date.
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A former screenwriter and independent filmmaker, Jenny Bowen founded Half the Sky (now OneSky for all children) in 1998 in order to give something back to China, her adopted daughters’ home country, and to the many orphaned and abandoned children then languishing behind institutional walls. Under Ms. Bowen's leadership, OneSky has grown into a global NGO whose mission is to train communities and caregivers to provide nurturing responsive care and early education that unlocks the potential hidden in our world’s most vulnerable young children. OneSky now works in Mainland China, Vietnam, Mongolia, and Hong Kong.
In China, OneSky (now through its local implementing partner, Chunhui Children’s Foundation) has transformed the lives of many thousands of marginalized children and helped China re-imagine its entire child welfare system. In Vietnam, OneSky has tailored its approach to address the needs of 1.2 million children of factory workers, opened the Da Nang Early Learning Center, and, in partnership with government, is now scaling its training for home-based childcare providers throughout the country. In Hong Kong, in 2020, OneSky opened its regional training base—the P.C. Lee OneSky Global Centre for Early Childhood Development—in order to build a better future for the disadvantaged children of Hong Kong and the Asia Pacific region.
Among other awards, Ms. Bowen has been named named the American Chamber of Commerce's Women of Influence Non-Profit Leader of the Year, received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and was chosen by popular vote to carry the Olympic Torch on Chinese soil. She serves on China’s National Committee for Orphans and Disabled Children and on the Expert Consultative Committee for Beijing Normal University’s Philanthropy Research Institute. She is the author of the memoir, Wish You Happy Forever: What China’s Orphans Taught Me About Moving Mountains, published by Harper Collins.
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Co-Founder & CEO, Solutions Journalism Network
David Bornstein is the CEO and co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, which is working to establish solutions journalism as an integral part of mainstream news. He has been a journalist, focusing primarily on social innovation, for 30 years. From 2010-21, he co-authored the “Fixes” column in The New York Times, which focused on social innovation. He is the author of: How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, which has been published in 25 languages, The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank, and Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know.
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Founding Director, International Resource for Impact and Storytelling
Cara Mertes champions cinematic artists as leaders in society. Harnessing the power of cultural expression to support communities, policies and priorities rooted in dignity and justice, she is currently founder of the International Resource for Impact and Storytelling (IRIS), a new donor collaborative working internationally at the intersection of civic innovation, creative storytelling and narrative strategies. As Director at Ford Foundation (JustFilms), Sundance Institute (DFP) and as EP of P.O.V. on PBS, Mertes oversaw funding for hundreds of documentaries and envisioned a global network of independent film hubs. At Sundance, she co-created Stories of Change (Skoll Foundation) and co-founded Good Pitch (DocSociety). At POV, she received Emmy, duPont Columbia 's and a Webby Award for her original web series, POV’s Borders. Awarded Doc NYC Career, Doc Mogul and IDA Pioneer Award among others, degrees are from Vassar College, Hunter College and Harvard Business School’s OPM.
