OUR BOARD
The Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship is all volunteer-run by a small board of documentary editors and filmmakers, several of whom were close friends of Karen. Our programs are generously supported by an incredible group of volunteer documentary editor mentors and a network of industry professionals, including many of our fellowship alumni, who serve on our committees.
Erin Casper, ACE - Vice President
Erin Casper is an Emmy-nominated documentary editor whose award-winning films have screened at Sundance, New York Film Festival, Tribeca, True/False, Visions du Réel; distributed in movie theaters internationally, and broadcast on HBO, Showtime, PBS, The New York Times, Field of Vision, and Vanity Fair. Her selected editing credits include the Emmy-nominated Becoming, (Netflix); Risk, directed by Laura Poitras (Neon, Showtime); American Promise (Sundance Special Jury Award, Emmy nominee); Roll Red Roll (Netflix, POV), and The Last Season (Independent Spirit Truer than Fiction Award nominee). Outside of her work as an editor, Erin is a frequent panelist and mentor for Sundance, Tribeca, IFP, and True/False filmmaking labs, and is a 2011 Fellow and board member of the Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Ann Kim
Ann Kim is a filmmaker and designer. With roots in anthropology and film, Ann worked for over a decade as a filmmaker and journalist, focused primarily on health and science. Her credits include The Age of AIDS (Frontline) and Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? (PBS) both awarded duPont-Columbia Awards. Her latest film Lovesick is about matchmaking for HIV+ singles in India (streaming on Netflix in Asia). Outside of film, Ann is Senior Director of Health & Well-Being at IDEO and served as Chief Design Officer for U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy from 2016-2017, focusing on addiction, opioids, and loneliness. Ann has been a fellow of the Sundance Women in Film program and the Sundance Doc Edit Lab, and serves on the board of Noora Health. She graduated from Harvard College with a joint degree in anthropology and the study of religion. Her favorite edit room snack is dark chocolate.
Robin Hessman - Vice President
Robin Hessman is a documentary filmmaker and creative producer. She is currently producing the upcoming Simple As Water directed by Academy-Award ® winner, Megan Mylan. Robin directed, produced and shot the Peabody-award winning film, My Perestroika which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the US Documentary Competition and was a NY Times Critics’ Pick -- released theatrically in 80 cities across North America. Previously, Robin co-produced several acclaimed PBS films including the Peabody-award winning Tupperware! and the biography of Julia Child. Robin is also Vice-President and a founding board member of the Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship. For many years she served as the Director of Documentary Programming of AMFEST, the American Film Festival in Moscow, where she introduced Russian audiences to notable independent documentaries from the US. In the 1990s, Robin worked for Sesame Workshop as the on-site producer of the Russian Sesame Street, Ulitsa Sezam. Robin is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was Filmmaker in Residence at WGBH in Boston and has also been a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Sundance Institute Fellow, and a Copeland Fellow at Amherst College. She graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a joint degree in Film and Russian and received her graduate degree in film directing from the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow. She is a member of the Documentary Branch of AMPAS.
Ellie Lee
Ellie Lee is an award-winning director, writer and producer of fiction, animated, and documentary films which have screened at the Berlin Film Festival and over a hundred festivals worldwide. She is a five-time National Emmy Award nominee. She was an episode producer for the four-hour series Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?, which won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for excellence in broadcast journalism. As a storyteller, her performances for The Moth have been featured on NPR's The Moth Radio Hour and in the 2014 New York Times best seller The Moth: 50 True Stories.
Maya Mumma, ACE - president
Maya Mumma, ACE, was an editor on the Academy Award winning documentary O.J.: Made in America for which she was honored with a Best Editing award from the LA Film Critics Association, an ACE Eddie, and a Primetime Emmy. Maya began her career in the edit room of the Academy Award nominated documentary Restrepo, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. She has gone on to edit films such as Which Way Is the Front Line From Here (HBO), Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley (HBO), Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown (HBO), A Journey of a Thousand Miles (PBS), the Netflix original series Daughters of Destiny, and most recently the Emmy winning King in the Wilderness (HBO) and the Emmy and Peabody Award winning True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality (HBO). In addition to her work with the Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship, Maya has served as a mentor for the Firelight Media Documentary Lab, the TFI StoryLab and the Open City Documentary Festival Assembly Lab.
Rachel Shuman
Rachel Shuman is a documentary editor and director based in the greater New York City area. Rachel's most recent editing endeavors include Storm Lake (in post-production), Omara: The Last Diva (in post-production), True Believer (Ashland Independent Film Festival 2019), Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf (DOC NYC 2017), and One October (Full Frame 2017). Rachel has also worked as an editor on on-air promos and nonfiction programming for A&E, History, and MTV. Originally from Boston, Rachel received a BFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York.
