Gayle Donsky, Executive Producer

In 2018, Gayle Donsky produced the short documentary Faces of Genocide after spending 15 years advocating for human rights. Faces of Genocide received an Outstanding Achievement in Filmmaking award at the Newport Beach Film Festival in 2019. Gayle is a retired social worker who has worked in adoptions, foster care, a pediatric outpatient clinic and in private psychotherapy practice. Working in public settings with children, she saw first-hand the devastating effects that dysfunctional institutions and governments have on innocent children and families. Since retirement she has been active in multiple social justice issues, including the anti-genocide movement. She organized Bay Area events and “The Judgment on Genocide: An International Citizens’ Tribunal for Sudan,” which took place in New York.  She was a recipient of the Jewish Community Relations Council’s Honorable Tom Lantos Memorial Award for Unsung Heroes.

Mohamed I. Elgadi of Sudan is a survivor of torture in Sudan and is living in the United States under political asylum. He earned his M.A. in Environmental Studies at the Univeristy of Khartoum and his Ph.D. in Education at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. A committed activist on the American national stage and in international circles, Dr. Elgadi, is the co-founder of the Philadelphia-based Darfur Alert Coalition, a Sudanese-American group of grassroots activists working on issues related to Darfur. He is the Founder and Chair of the Group Against Torture in Sudan (GATS), an advocacy group working among Sudanese refugees. He also serves on the advisory committee of Judgement on Genocide: International Citizens Tribunal for Sudan. This project has created a forum for discussing the genocide and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Sudanese government led by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.  

Mohamed was instrumental in bringing to court the head of security of the former regime of the longest African religious dictatorship. In January 2020, during the short-lived democracy of Sudan, the governmental authorities represented by the Attorney General's office took Mohamed's testimony on his 118 days of detention in a secret torture center run by the government. 

Nury Turkel is the first U.S.-educated Uyghur-American lawyer, foreign policy expert, and human rights advocate. He was born in a re-education camp at the height of China's tumultuous Cultural Revolution and spent the first several months of his life in detention with his mother. He came to the United States in 1995 as a student and was later granted asylum by the U.S. government.

Since June 2022, Nury has served as the Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, having been reappointed by Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in May of 2022 for a two-year term. In September 2020, Turkel was named one of the TIME 100 Most Influential People in the World; in May 2021, he was named on Fortune's List of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders. 

He is the author of No Escape: The True Story of China's Genocide of the Uyghurs, a powerful memoir that lays bare China's repression of the Uyghur people.

Dr. Alfiee M. Breland-Noble ("Dr. Alfiee") is a pioneering psychologist, scientist, media personality, author, and speaker. As Founder of the mental health nonprofit, The AAKOMA Project, Inc., she translates complex scientific concepts (developed over 20+ years as a disparities researcher at Duke and Georgetown Med Schools) into useful, everyday language for communities of color. She is a fierce advocate of #optimalmentalhealth for all and has spent 25+ years illuminating and reducing mental health disparities in diverse communities.

A sought-after mental health expert, Dr. Alfiee's media work includes hosting her new video podcast, "Couched in Color with Dr. Alfiee," addressing mental health issues in youth, young adults, and marginalized communities. She regularly appears on media platforms, including CNN, NBC, PBS, A & E TV, Black Enterprise, NPR, and many more. Widely recognized for her ability to draw in audiences and inspire, she embodies her belief that there is enough love and light (informed by strong culturally relevant science) to help everyone achieve optimal mental health.

Kurt Norton, Director

After a successful career working as a licensed Private Investigator specializing in death penalty cases, Kurt Norton switched paths to focus on documentary filmmaking as part of Gravitas Docufilms. He co-directed and co-produced These Amazing Shadows in 2011, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, picked up distribution through IFC, and had multiple broadcasts on the PBS series Independent Lens; produced Being George Clooney, a lively look into the world of the audio dubbing of Hollywood movies for the international market (2016 –Netflix Worldwide); co-produced The Deep Sky (2017) a narrative feature, The S Word (2017) a moving documentary about suicide survivors, and co-directed Faces of Genocide, a documentary short subject (2018) that won an outstanding short subject award at the Newport Beach Film Festival. He is currently directing a documentary about climate change.

Alexa Koenig, PhD, JD, is the Executive Director of the Human Rights Center (winner of the 2015 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions) and a lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she teaches classes on human rights and international criminal law with a particular focus on the impact of emerging technologies on human rights practice. She co-founded the Human Rights Center Investigations Lab, which trains students and professionals to use social media and other digital content to strengthen human rights advocacy and accountability. Alexa is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, co-chair of the Technology Advisory Board of the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, co-chair of the International Bar Association's Human Rights Law Committee's Technology and Human Rights working group, a member of the University of California’s Presidential Working Group on Artificial Intelligence (for which she co-chairs the Human Resources subcommittee), an inaugural member of the Technology Advisory Board at Human Rights First, and a member of the board of advisors for the Syrian Archive.

Mihrigul Tursun is a former Uyghur detainee from Xinjiang, China. After immigrating to the United States with her two children in 2018, Tursun revealed that she was taken into the custody of Chinese authorities several times, including being imprisoned at one of a network of political "re-education camps" for Uyghurs, subject to torture, and that one of her sons died while she was in the custody of Chinese authorities in 2015. In early 2018 she was given permission to take her children to Egypt, where they were born and whose citizenship they also hold. 

On 28 November 2018, Mihrigul Tursun, speaking through a translator, testified before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China about her experience over a series of three internments. While in the United States, she learned that she had been forcibly sterilized, presumably during compulsory treatments while in custody in China.

In December 2018, Mihrigul received a Citizen Power Award from the National Endowment for Democracy.

Nahid Abunama-Elgadi is a Sudanese-American performance artist based in S.F. and NYC. She studied Theater, Community Arts & Political Science at Temple University in Philadelphia before teaching Pre-K for five years while performing original works in San Francisco. In 2015, Nahid joined the band Alsarah & The Nubatones and began touring nationally and internationally as a backing vocalist and playing additional percussion. When Nahid is not touring with the band, she continues to create her original work in theater, poetry, music, and dance while teaching part-time. Nahid believes in change, continual life learning, the preservation of the planet, and the fight for human rights.