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| Phil Courter Director/ Editor |
Director/Editor Philip Courter has primary
credit on over 200 films and videos on a wide range of subject matter. Phil is especially experienced in working with human
interest subjects, and has directed numerous award-winning programs dealing with environmental and family life issues. Among
public television projects, he has directed a highly acclaimed series on Florida's environment, and a one-hour special,
Where's My Chance? The Case for Our Children, which has been distributed to 350
stations nationwide. In 1989, Courter Films, in association with WEDU/Tampa, completed a series of three documentary films
entitled The Florida Water Story, which received common carriage on all of Florida's
PBS stations. They are currently being distributed on an underwritten basis to the state's public and private secondary
school science students.
Phil is the author of Capturing the Image: 16mm Cinematography
and taught filmmaking at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, at the Bank Street College of Education in New York
City, and continues to lecture on documentary film/videomaking at the secondary and university levels.
Phil Courter's
PBS documentary on children's issues won the Best Documentary award from the Louis Wolfson Media Center in Miami, and
a Regional Emmy award for Best Documentary from the National Academy for the Television Arts and Sciences.
Phil
currently serves on the board of Kids Central Inc. hat serves abused and neglected children in a five-county district in Florida.
He is also on the Board of Listening to Parents, a national adoption advocacy organization. Phil received the Southern Region
Board Leadership Award from the Child Welfare League of America for his volunteer child advocacy efforts. Phil's interests include flying airplanes (instrument rating) and the design and construction
of innovative underwater camera housings, aerial camera systems, camera cranes and dollies, a silent reflex film camera, a
10-plate horizontal film editing system, and musical instruments. He also is an accomplished bluegrass musician.
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| Gay Courter Producer/ Writer |
Producer/writer
Gay Courter has worked continuously in film and television production since graduation from Antioch College. She is also author
of five best-selling novels with over three million copies in print.
Gay won a Suncoast Regional Emmy Award for the series of mini-documentaries
titled Solutions for America's Children.
Gay has served as a volunteer
in the Florida Guardian Ad Litem program since 1989 and still has an active caseload. She has written I Speak For This Child: True Stories of a Child Advocate, a non-fiction book about her work as a child advocate,
has appeared on Good Morning America, NBC Weekend Edition, and in Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor,
and other national publications as an expert on these issues. I Speak For This Child
was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Gay has received the Child Advocate of the Year award in Florida for her work as a Guardian
ad Litem, the Sharon Solomon Child Advocate Award from the Florida Center for Children and Youth, and special recognition
from the Florida Chapter of American Women in Radio and Television, Inc. for her work on Where's
My Chance? The Case for Our Children and the Altrusa International 10 Most Admired Women twice.
How to Survive Your Husband's Midlife Crisis: Strategies and Stories from the Midlife Wives
Club was published by Perigee/Putnam in 2003.
Gay and Phil Courter are the proud parents of two sons, Blake and Joshua, and a daughter, Ashley, who was adopted
from foster care at age 12. Blake, an engineering graduate of Princeton University, is the co-fonder of SpaceClaim.com, a
3D CAD design software firm. Joshua, who has a degree in ethnographic film from Hampshire College, is a filmmaker, designer,
fine furniture craftsman and yachtsman. Ashley graduated with honors from Eckerd College and also gives speeches and appearances
as an advocate for adoption. Her life story, titled Three Little Words was published
by Simon & Schuster in 2008 and was a New York Times Bestseller.
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| Terry Balderson Executive Producer |
Executive
Producer Terry Balderson was born in Oconto Falls, Wisconsin and holds a BBA and MBA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Terry's experience includes six and a half years with Touche, Ross, a CPA firm; three+ years as Chief Financial
Officer of Beloit Tool Corporation; three+ years as Chief Financial Officer of LCL Transit; and finally a consultant with
Capital Formation Counselors, a private consulting firm in Belleair Bluffs, Florida, starting as a Vice President in 1975,
then President from 1990 until retirement in 2001.
Terry prefers to remain behind the scenes on his many beneficial
projects, but his special ability to bring people together deserves credit here. Both Terry and Dr. Borlaug were on the Board
of Legacy Memory Bank (see: "Links & Borlaug Background")
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| Joshua F. Courter Production Associate |
Production
Associate Joshua F. Courter received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Film & Television from Hampshire College in Amherst,
Massachusetts in 2000. As a student, he created a demonstration website for the distribution of anthropological films,
and produced two documentaries: Last Resort—The Fragile World of Ile à Vache
which documents the development of a resort on a tiny, impoverished Haitian island and Havana
Hustle which depicts the lives of two young Cubans who must use all of their resources to survive within the challenges
of Castro’s economic system.
During his senior year as an intern and and immediately following as an employee,
Josh worked in NYC for two major commercial post houses: First Edition Composite and Mckenzie Cutler as an Avid editor's
assistant.
After college, Josh worked as International Project Director for Railway Marketing, helping develop
Chinese testing and manufacturing of a patented device to increase railroad traffic and rail car speed, and also as a cameraman
and editor for Courter Films. His videography credits include several titles Courter Films produced in their series
on social work strategies for abused and neglected children, industrial films for NRG Resources (oil refining equipment) and
his editing credits include music videos and commercials. He was an early adapter in the use of non-linear editing (Media
100) and is an advanced user of audio and imaging software including After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Pro Tools, and Photoshop.
Josh has contributed camera, editorial and promotion skills on Freedom from Famine:
The Norman Borlaug Story, including HD videography in Obregon, Mexico.
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| Fernanda Rossi, Story Consultant |
Fernanda Rossi, writer, filmmaker and
story consultant, helps filmmakers craft the stpry structure of their films in all stages of the filmmaking process. She has
worked on over 150 documentaries, fiction scripts and fundraising trailers. She is the author of the book Trailer Mechanics, A Guide to Making Your Documentary Fundraising Tailer.
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| Lyin Hughes, Consultant and Archivist |
Lynn Hughes is an award winning producer whose career in theatre
and television spans nearly 20 years. As a producer/writer/director of numerous television series and specials, her work
has aired on networks across the globe, including the History Channel, Discovery, NBC, PBS, BBC (US and UK), Channel 4 (UK),
and others. Her experience in production, content development and production communications management is extensive, specializing
in planning, budgeting, and writing.
She has established a track record for leading educational and informational
video projects and has completed programs for classroom use as well as commercial television distribution. These projects
include multipart programs such as the eight-part In Search of the Novel, an instructional series for Annenberg/CPB on integrating
major novels into classroom curricula as well as her most recent project, a Media Literacy series for Discovery Global Education
Partnership.
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| Marjorie J. Schad Research Associate |
Research
Associate Marjorie J. (“Mitzi”) Schad graduated from Lyons Township High School, La Grange, Illinois, received
her Bachelor of Arts Degree from Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, and completed further education at the Katharine
Gibbs School, New York City.
From 1948 to 1962, she worked for The Rockefeller Foundation in New York, NY.
She was assigned first to the Natural Sciences program, including the Mexican Agricultural Program where Dr. Borlaug was working,
and subsequently to the Office of the Vice President for Natural and Medical Sciences. During 1959-60 she was on a special
assignment as Assistant in the Foundation’s office in London. After returning to the New York office, her duties
were in the Social Sciences program.
From 1962 to 1964, she worked for the U. S. Peace Corps with assignment as
Administrative Assistant in the Peace Corps office, first in Tunis, Tunisia, and later in Yaounde, Cameroun. In both
Tunis and Yaounde she was the principal administrative link between the local Peace Corps office and the U. S. Government
agencies (U. S. Embassy and USAID) providing Peace Corps support.
From 1964 to 1985, Mitzi again joined
The Rockefeller Foundation in New York to work in the Agricultural Sciences program, initially for the officer responsible
for the Foundation’s activities in agriculture in Africa, and later, as the assistant to the Director for Agricultural
Sciences. She assisted the Director in preparation of budgets; administration of grants; directing visitors, letters,
and telephone inquiries to the appropriate officer; administrative details relating to appointments of professional field
staff (including Dr. Borlaug), postdoctoral fellows, and visiting research fellows, wherever in the world they were assigned.
From 1985 to 1989, Mitzi joined the Office of International Agriculture at Oregon State University.
Here, she became "desk officer" on campus for a USAID-funded project in Bangladesh in which OSU faculty, along
with faculty from a Japanese university, were assigned to Dhaka to aid in the development of the Institute for Postgraduate
Studies in Agriculture.
Today, Mitzi serves as a volunteer teacher of English to the wives of OSU international
students and visiting scholars and pursues her hobbies of hiking, bicycling, reading, and travel.
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| Joshua Tabachnick Composer |
Composer, Joshua Tabachnick, began
his musical journey at the age of 3 and was the youngest student ever accepted at the Montreal Conservatory of Music. He has
composed music for several films and television specials including productions for The Discovery Channel and most recently
had a world premiere performance of his piece "Lauren’s Waltz" by the Florida Philharmonic. Joshua has composed
music for corporations such as Four Seasons Hotels and Mitchell Gold Furniture. Joshua has recently produced a CD for singer/songwriter
Michael Devito and is currently working on a score for an Hispanic Television Pilot.
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