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Sara Needham

Location:
United States
Languages:
English
Issues:
Climate Change, Disability Rights, LGBTQIA+, Child Welfare, Racial Injustice, Hunger/Food insecurity, Economic Injustice, Women and Girls, Aging, Human Rights
Expertise:
Educational materials, Impact Producing, Impact Strategist/Advisor, Campaign Implementation, Designing impact guides
Cultural/racial identity:
Berkeley
Self identification:
female

Bio

Sara Needham is an Emmy-nominated producer passionate about stories that inspire positive change while opening hearts and minds. With nearly twenty years of experience in documentary film and journalism, Sara takes a tailored approach to lead and implement successful outreach & impact campaigns for award-winning documentaries.

She has a proven track record in strategic partnerships, community screenings & engagement, PBS broadcast & underwriting campaigns, corporate screening events, film festival rollouts, semi-theatrical runs, story consulting, and non-traditional fundraising.

A few recent examples of films she’s worked with include: FREE: THE POWER OF PERFORMANCE, a film she co-produced about five teens who find hope and freedom through the power of dance and spoken word. The critically-acclaimed THE LAVENDER SCARE about the US government's fifty-year campaign to remove gays and lesbians from the federal workforce. And BIG SONIA, a PBS and Academy-award qualified film about 96 year-old Sonia Warshawski, one of the last remaining Holocaust survivors whose incredible story of survival has helped countless others who once thought their own traumas would leave them broken forever.

Sara holds a BA in anthropology with a focus in medical anthropology from UC Berkeley. She also has a Master's of Journalism degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where she learned the craft of filmmaking from veteran, Oscar-nominated filmmakers and her reporting skills from some of the top journalists in the country. She is based in Berkeley, CA.