Content & Creative Director
Chicago/Midwest Emmy® Nominated Documentary Filmmaker
People Stories
Documentary Video
As a documentary director, I approach storytelling differently.
Telling your own story is hard, so my interviews feel more like conversations. People tell me they forget the camera is even there. Other creatives on my set put it this way: "You make people comfortable. That's rare." For some projects, I bring in professional storytellers and techniques from The Moth, 2nd Story, and StoryLab Chicago before the interview day, so subjects feel confident telling their story in their own words.
Each story gets a cinematic documentary treatment plus a content system built around how its audience already finds it. The results: over a million organic views on patient story content, across long-form documentary, short-form vertical video, articles, interactive Stories, and more.
Betty Van Damme:
What's It Like To Donate a Kidney?
I discovered Betty Ann Van Damme on TikTok, where she was documenting her lifelong goal of donating a kidney. Betty gave me unprecedented access to every moment of this life-saving journey.
Instead of the usual at-home interview, I brought Betty and her care team into the studio one day before her donation surgery and built custom projections for the set, run on an 8K projector. Each one visualized her inner state at a different point in her journey to donate, so the audience could see what she was feeling, not just hear it. I also followed her through her pre-surgery appointments and procedures, all the way into the OR to watch her achieve her lifelong dream of donating her kidney.
I built one story into a full content ecosystem: a documentary-style patient video, four short FAQ videos about organ donation, two TikTok/IG Reels, and an interactive Instagram Story. Each piece gave our audience a different way into Betty's story while driving awareness of NM's leading Organ Transplant center.
Chicago/Midwest Emmy Nominated:
RENT Documentary Video Series
Porchlight Music Theatre wanted dramaturgy that audiences would actually watch. So instead of a program note or a poster board, we made a three-part documentary series. I earned a Chicago/Midwest Emmy nomination for directing it!
The strategy was to reach ticket buyers everywhere they'd be before the curtain went up: in their inbox after purchase, on social, and on loop in the lobby. Episodes one and two drop viewers into Jonathan Larson's East Village through 1990s archival photography, footage, and music. Episode three connects that world to Porchlight's production.
I led a team of four creatives and owned the creative vision, archival licensing, international talent, and post. 525,600 archival photos later, one audience member called it "a model of the sorts of materials that can dramatically enhance a viewer's experience."
More Than A Month
Pride is more than a month at Northwestern Medicine, and in 2022 we wanted to prove it.
We launched our "More Than A Month" campaign in June, and then committed publicly to posting stories from our LGBTQ+ patients and providers every month for the rest of the year.
This series also created the model process for NM's ongoing communications about their employee resource groups, the NM Champion Network.
There's no denying that at Northwestern Medicine, Pride is much more than a month.
Portraits of Pain
When I learned the most painful condition known to medicine was also invisible, I said "not for long!"
I paired people whose invisible condition causes them horrible pain with artists. For the first time, patients could visualize the debilitating disease that plagued them, and share the images with their physicians and families.
John and Ted: A Love Story
What's it like being married to a doctor? For John and Ted it means a shared mission, and a legacy of love. Ted Corbin, MD, practices emergency medicine and John Rich, MD, practices internal medicine, and both have spent their careers on violence prevention for young people of color. For Pride, I sat them down to talk about marriage, medicine, and what it means to a Black patient in pain to look up and see a Black doctor.
Jimmy Choi: Parkinson's Warrior
If you ask Jimmy Choi what time it is, he always says, "Two seconds till." Before you can ask "two seconds till what?" you'll already be in a plank position.
Jimmy doesn't just get his care at NM. He also collaborates with a research scientist at Feinberg to develop workouts that are slowing the progression of his Parkinson's disease.
In addition to our sit down interview, I went where Jimmy goes. I trained with him at his American Ninja Warrior gym, followed him into the lab where Parkinson's researchers test him in the search for a cure, and went with him to his daughter's baseball game, visually reinforcing that Jimmy and his researchers are a team, playing to win.
I built his story as a funnel. Short-form video for TikTok and IG Reels was the discoverability tool, a targeted Facebook campaign and email featured the documentary, and a long-form article ran on nm.org. Coordinated UGC image and video posts carried the story organically across every platform, all driving traffic back to NM's Parkinson's landing page.
