Jared Ruga is an Emmy®-winning and GLAAD-nominated producer, writer, director, and creative executive charged with developing, financing, and producing meaningful content that engages audiences in conversation and action for a prosocial agenda. He performs most of these roles as CEO of Vavani Productions, an ethos-driven media production company he founded in 2017. In the nonprofit sector, Jared has served in various board, committee, and advisory roles at Sundance Institute, Voterise, Equality Utah, Restore Our Humanity, and the University of San Diego, and is Co-Founder and Board Member of both the Impact Guild and the Lightspark Foundation. Jared earned JD, MBA, and MFA degrees from the University of Utah and BBA and dual-BA degrees from the University of San Diego, where he was inducted into multiple honors societies, including Phi Beta Kappa. He has also created and taught undergraduate classes at both of his alma maters. Jared lives in Los Angeles.

Blake Pickens is an Emmy Award-winning Chickasaw filmmaker and comedian. Blake began his career writing satire for The National Lampoon, where he published numerous featured articles. He is a part of A Tribe Called Sketch, the first all Native American sketch show on a US Second City Stage. He can be seen performing stand up all over LA. Blake was selected for the Time Warner Sundance Native Producing Lab and Fellowship and the Sundance Producing Fellowship for his film, THE LAND. The film premiered in 2016 at the Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically by IFC Films. Blake has produced content with a focus on diversity and inclusion, ranging from feature films to commercials and music videos. He has produced commercials that have won a Grand Prix at Cannes Lions two years in a row (2017, 2018), and won a 2018 Emmy for his P&G commercial, THE TALK. He also won an MTV VMA for his work on John Legend’s music video, SUREFIRE. His second feature film as a producer, WILD INDIAN, with Michael Greyeyes and Jesse Eisenberg premiered at Sundance 2021. He was also a part of the Netflix-Illuminative Producers Program in 2023. Most recently, Blake produced THE ROOF for DIsney+/Launchpad and wrote/directed a short for the Disney-AFI Underrepresented Filmmakers Initiative.

Much to her horror, Marta Reeder was voted “Best Dressed” in 6th grade. Subtle dig to her avant-garde sense of style aside, the superlative she truly coveted was “Most Likely to Be a Writer.” But an imposter named Kayla swooped in and stole that title, so this Reeder retaliated by writing – everything she could, all the time. Eventually a concentrated assembly of these countless words wound up culminating in an English degree from the University of Utah. (Although for the fastidious among us, her degree falls more into the realm of creative writing.) After a brief wandering period and an existential crisis, Marta found herself up on the Salt Lake City stand-up comedy scene. She was featured in City Weekly’s “Up and Coming Comedians” and plenty of local showcases, and for a while, Marta felt this was the pathway to her future writing career in film and television. After joining about a hundred writing groups, one of those finally stuck and turned into a three-year stint full-time at Vavani Productions. Now Marta hawks her wares as a freelance writer. And the rest is still unwritten.