David is a French film director and former professional kayaker. Filming his own river expeditions around the world, he wanted even his grandmother to understand his films - and learned to bring nuance to adventure stories. He has since built a career directing films for international brands and mountain sports events, often also serving as executive producer and live director. From ordinary heroes to Olympians, he still brings that approach to every project, making complex subjects accessible to mainstream audiences.

Catherine Pettman is an Australian film, television, and documentary producer with over 20 years of experience championing collaborative storytelling that connects human resilience with challenging natural landscapes. As the founder of Sheoak Films and co-founder of Rummin Productions, her creative vision is deeply shaped by the rugged, elemental environment of her home state of Tasmania (lutruwita). She has a rich history of partnering with creators to deliver diverse, high-impact stories, ranging from adventure-driven titles like Doing It Scared (chronicling climber Paul Pritchard’s return to the Totem Pole) to acclaimed scripted dramas like The Tailings and Moonbird. Driven by a strong social conscience, Catherine’s trusted industry collaborations have brought compelling regional narratives to major global audiences, with broadcast and streaming credits including the ABC, SBS, NITV, RTÉ, and ZDF.

As former Managing Director, Digital, Film and Media at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Kerry led the strategic development and growth of the Centre’s digital, film, media, production, technical services, professional training, and mountain culture portfolios. Kerry’s leadership brought together artistic vision, business development, technology, production, education, with a focus on developing creative programming and professional training opportunities, advancing production and technical infrastructure, building sustainable revenue and training models, and leading strategic planning, budgeting, partnerships, and resource development. A central focus of Kerry’s work was supporting programming across Banff Centre’s artistic disciplines workinfg collaboratively across disciplines and with the digital and creative sectors to develop interdisciplinary programming and professional development opportunities.

Within Mountain Culture, Kerry provided leadership for the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival, Festival On Demand, the World Tour, competitions, and programming, with oversight and guidance on business development, content strategy, financial management, and operational planning.

Prior to joining Banff Centre, Kerry was Director of Production and Program Competition at Achilles Media, where she led the Rockie Awards, an internationally recognized television and media competition. Through this work, Kerry developed extensive insight into the television industry and the creative and production qualities that distinguish exceptional work.

Kerry has produced awards programs and international arts events, executive produced an international congress of arts producers, and served as an international juror and participant in international exchanges. She has also produced and edited national television specials for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and produced, directed, and edited four seasons of BRAVO! Banff Masters, an acclaimed series profiling producers, writers, and directors from around the world.

Beki Henderson is a BAFTA-nominated Producer, Series Producer and Expedition Specialist who has spent over a decade making captivating films in some of the wildest places on Earth for National Geographic, Disney+, Netflix, Apple TV+, BBC and Channel 4. Her work has taken her from jungles, deserts and high mountains to caves and underwater worlds, working with leading adventurers including Steve Backshall, Aldo Kane and Ben Fogle, as well as A-list talent including Will Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio and Meryl Streep.

Alongside adventure filmmaking, Beki has spent much of her career working closely with remote and Indigenous communities around the world - experiences that have shaped how she thinks about storytelling, authorship and representation. A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and Scientific Exploration Society Explorer, she is also the founder of Stories We Tell, a filmmaking mentorship initiative supporting people in remote and Indigenous communities to become authors of their own stories. At the heart of her work is a simple question: who gets to tell the story?

Keir GoGwilt is a violinist and composer whose work often interfaces with material histories of performance, especially regarding string playing, acoustics/tuning, and Baroque aesthetics. Recent projects include The Zarabanda Variations (Carrier Records / [Name] Publications / Wesleyan University Press) - a collection of songs, dances and poems reflecting Baroque histories and futurisms of New Spain, and described as “a thrillingly original dive into colonial history” (The Guardian) which "ping-pongs between eras and iterations with almost hallucinogenic vitality” (Bandcamp). He continues to tour his album with Ruckus Early Music, “The Edinburgh Rollick,” comprised of music from the Neil Gow collections, and featured in Joel Coen’s forthcoming film, Jack of Spades. In recent seasons, GoGwilt has been composer-in-residence with the JACK Quartet, a resident fellow at the Copland House, and a commission grantee of the Barlow Foundation (writing a piece for the Bergamot Quartet and harpist Jacqueline Kerrod). A founding member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), he has long worked in the space of collaboratively-devised and interdisciplinary productions. As a violinist he has soloed with groups including the Basel Sinfonieorchester, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Chinese National Symphony, Orquesta Filarmonica de Santiago, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. He received his PhD in Music (Integrative Studies) at UCSD, where he was awarded the Chancellor's Dissertation Medal for his work on an aesthetic history of string pedagogy. His work is published in the Bach Journal and Current Musicology among others.

Photo by Peter Gannushkin

Pianist Conor Hanick is regarded as one of his generation’s most inquisitive interpreters of music new and old whose “technical refinement, color, crispness and wondrous variety of articulation benefit works by any master.” (New York Times) Hanick has worked with conductors Esa-Pekka Salonen, Ludovic Morlot, Alan Gilbert, and David Robertson; collaborated with the San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Orchestra Iowa, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Juilliard Orchestra; and been presented by the Gilmore Festival, New York Philharmonic, Elbphilharmonie, De Singel, Centre Pompidou, Cal Performances, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Park Avenue Armory, and the Ojai Festival, where in 2022 with AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company) he served as the festival’s artistic director and where in 2026 he’ll be a featured artist under director Esa-Pekka Salonen. 

A fierce advocate for the music of today, Hanick has premiered over 200 pieces and collaborated with composers ranging from Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, and Steve Reich, to the leading composers of his generation, including Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Tyshawn Sorey, Marcos Balter, and Samuel Carl Adams, whose piano concerto, No Such Spring, he premiered in 2023 with Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony. This season Hanick presents solo and chamber recitals in the US, Europe, and Australia, including concerts presented by Cal Performances, the Phillips Collection, Galliard Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and others. He appears with the Seattle Symphony, San Diego Symphony, and will be a resident artist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra in their Currents Festival.

Hanick is the director of Solo Piano at the Music Academy of the West and serves on the faculty of The Juilliard School, the CUNY Graduate Center, and Mannes College at The New School. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School and lives with his family in the Hudson Valley.

Violinist/violist Miranda Cuckson delights audiences with her performances of music ranging from older eras to the newest creations. She has played innumerable concerts and premieres of new music and played a major role in bringing new creations more to the center of cultural life. Praised recently for “a rare style that fuse[s] precision and elegance with passionate intensity and successful risk-taking” [Berkshire Edge], she loves bringing musical experiences to venues large and small, from concert halls to casual spaces.  Engaging with many musical avenues (including those of Western classical traditions and American music), she has pursued a personal path motivated by sincere interest, innovation, and exploration, the expression of any human feelings and experiences, and the realization of virtuosity, craft, and invention.

Miranda premiered Georg Friedrich Haas’ Violin Concerto No. 2 in four countries and made her solo debut at the Vienna Musikverein with this piece in 2023, with the Vienna Radio Symphony and conductor Markus Poschner. The live recording was released in 2025 on the Urlicht AV label to great acclaim, as was her live performance of the Ligeti Violin Concerto with the UC Davis Orchestra, on Centaur Records.

She is a featured soloist at many festivals internationally, including Wien Modern, Grafenegg, Lincoln Center, Ojai, Le GuessWho, West Cork, Bard, Frequency, Time Spans, and Sinus Ton, and by such presenters as St. Paul’s Liquid Music, 92NY, Miller Theatre, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Library of Congress, and the Cleveland Museum. She recently gave recitals at San Francisco Performances, Boston’s Gardner Museum, and the Detroit Institute of Art.

Her current projects include new violin concertos by Jeffrey Mumford and Dongryul Lee; “Limin”,a concert-length duo by/with pianist Stewart Goodyear, to be released on Avie Records; a collaboration with harpist Parker Ramsay including a new duo by Haas; a work for solo violin and choir by Rene Hirschfeld; and upcoming solo performances at the Mito International Festival in Japan.

Her recordings include “Világ” featuring the Bartók Solo Sonata and folk-flavored compositions; the Korngold, Ponce, and Piston concertos; an ECM Records album of duos by Bartok, Schnittke, and Lutoslawski; the Grammy-nominated “Songs and Structures” by Harold Meltzer; Michael Hersch’s “the wreckage of flowers”; several albums of 20th-century American music; and “Melting the darkness”, a forward-looking compilation of microtonal/electronic music. Her album, with Christopher Burns, of Luigi Nono’s “La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura” was named a Recording of the Year by the New York Times.

Passionate about all the arts, Miranda is a core member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*), an interdisciplinary collective of dancers, singers, and instrumentalists that has been featured at the Lincoln Center and Ojai Festivals. She is the founder of non-profit Nunc, a programming and concert-producing organization.

Dedicated to education, Miranda teaches violin and chamber music at the Mannes School of Music/New School University. She frequently writes and speaks to audiences about music and she earned her doctorate from The Juilliard School.
 

Taiwo Afolabi is an award-winning researcher, educator, entrepreneur, and chartered director whose career is defined by innovation across diverse global domains. With professional experience in 35 countries across six continents, he provides the strategic governance and executive leadership needed to build and scale impactful organizations in higher education, creative technology, and entertainment. Afolabi possesses deep expertise in executive strategic advising, board governance, and corporate leadership.

As Founder of Emissary Group (EG), a conglomerate providing services across knowledge, culture, and the creative industries, he manages major corporate decisions. Under his leadership, EG built viable products and services and developed partnerships that better positioned the company for profitability. His current and past board appointments include Director, Mass Culture (Canada), where he served on the governance committee and contributed to the development of the organization's social enterprise initiative. As Board Chair of Common Weal Community Arts (Canada), he led sustainable financial initiatives and managed executive and artistic director recruitment; as Co-President of the UNESCO International Theatre Institute's Network of Emerging Arts Professionals, he led rebranding initiatives and strategic planning to mobilize engagement across 56 member states. He directed rebranding initiatives and strategic planning to mobilize engagement across 56 member states. He successfully operationalized the leadership transition plan.

Afolabi is driven by research and innovation. A Canada Research Chair in Socially Engaged Theatre and a 3M National Teaching Fellow, Afolabi is recognized for post-secondary educational leadership and teaching excellence. He founded and directs the Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre (C-SET) and has established partnerships with over 10 global institutions. He served as a consultant to organizations such as the University of Regina, Rugby Canada, the British Columbia (BC) Government BIPOC Employee Resource Group, and the Saskatchewan Arts Board. He was part of the team that led the University of Regina's 10-year strategic plan (2026-2036). He regularly contributes to international media outlets and hosts the Glocal Voices and Excellence with a Soul™ Re:Frame podcasts. Additionally, he serves as an appointed mentor for the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, guiding doctoral scholars through 2027.

Finally, Afolabi holds a PhD in Applied Theatre from the University of Victoria. His professional designations include Chartered Director (C.Dir) from McMaster University, Administrateur de sociétés certifié (ASC) from Université Laval, and MBA Essentials from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA), Salzburg Global, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College (MRSC). He is an alumnus of the Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference (GGCLC).