Team – Human Shield

Our Team

The storytellers behind the film.

Meet the creatives and crew behind the documentary

Erin Persley is a documentary director and producer whose work focuses on personal stories that connect communities and illuminate complex social issues. Her films include Living Inside Out, which explores prison reentry through the experiences of three women in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Empowering the Yard, which examined an HIV peer education program in an Oklahoma women’s prison and was selected for the 2009 American Documentary Showcase, screening at U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Uganda. As a Producer and Documentary Instructor with Actuality Abroad, Erin has worked on documentary projects in Nicaragua, Nepal, Morocco, and Cambodia. She is an Associate of the U.C. Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program and a 2019 and 2020 SFFILM FilmHouse Resident. She also produced Bleeding Audio (Slamdance, 2021), which received audience awards at multiple festivals. Human Shield is Erin’s most personal documentary to date, shaped by years of relationship-building with clinic escorts and a commitment to telling stories of people working to protect their communities.

Rajal Pitroda is a producer of fiction and non-fiction films. She is a Women at Sundance Fellow, Impact Partners Producers Fellow, Film Independent Documentary Producing Lab Fellow, and Sundance Creative Producing Fellow. Rajal’s recent credits include “The Gas Station Attendant,” winner of a Special Mention Grand Jury Prize at the 2025 Sheffield DocFest, the award winning documentary short “A Shot at History,” which premiered at the 2024 Double Exposure Film Festival, “Southern Fried Lies” which premiered on Peacock in April 2025, and “Down a Dark Stairwell,” which premiered at the 2020 True/False Film Festival and was broadcast on Independent Lens. Prior to producing, Rajal was the Founder and CEO of Cinevention, a media company focused on marketing and distribution, where she designed and executed distribution strategies for feature films. Rajal started her career working in international marketing for Bollywood movies based in Mumbai. She has a degree in Economics from the University of Michigan and an MBA from London Business School.

Erin Semine Kökdil is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and producer committed to building solidarity and inciting social change through film. Her work is an exploration of love and resistance, touching upon themes of resilience, migration, identity, and motherhood, and has screened at IDFA, Hot Docs, AFI Docs. Her work has been featured on The New Yorker, the LA Times, KQED, Means TV, and supported by SFFILM, Points North Institute, National Geographic, and Fulbright. She holds an MFA in Documentary Film and Video from Stanford University. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Media Production at the University of Oklahoma.

Stephanie Palumbo is a documentary impact strategist, producer, and organizer with more than 20 years of experience using storytelling to drive social and political change. As Director of Film Impact and Innovation at Peace is Loud, she led the strategy and execution of the organization’s documentary impact and filmmaker support programs while developing tools to promote ethical, care-driven filmmaking practices. Stephanie began her career as a researcher for Michael Moore and has worked with filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, and Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. In 2023, Stephanie was named one of DOC NYC’s Documentary New Leaders for her contributions to the field, and her work has been featured in reports by the Sundance Institute, the Kendeda Fund, and American University’s Center for Media and Social Impact. Outside of film, Stephanie has been involved in community organizing for nearly three decades and is a former assistant editor at O, The Oprah Magazine and freelance writer published in The Believer and Vulture.

Anna is a documentary filmmaker and Cinematographer, whose work revolves around working with individuals to tell empowering stories about women and people in the LGBT community, and exploring the causes and consequences of immigration. Anna's projects have taken her to India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Puerto Rico, Panama, Cuba, México, and across the United States. Her work has been recognized by the North Carolina Press Photographers Association, College Photographer of the Year, NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism, and she was nominated for a 2016 News and Documentary Emmy Award. She is also an Adelante Fellow with the International Women’s Media Foundation, and holds a B.A. in Women/Gender/Sexuality Studies from Washington University in St. Louis and an M.A. in Visual Journalism from The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Emily Thomas is a documentary cinematographer specializing in cinéma vérité filmmaking. Her work has been featured on Netflix, Frontline, PBS, Peacock, CBS, and The New Yorker. She recently served as cinematographer on the feature documentary Baby Doe (SXSW 2025) and the Frontline series American Voices. Her directing and producing credits include Stories of a Generation (Netflix) and Last Days at Paradise High (The New Yorker), and she has worked with Jigsaw Productions and PBS on projects including The Great Thirst: William Mulholland and Bodyguard of Lies (Paramount+). Before filmmaking, Emily was a journalist and human rights investigator, reporting on breaking news and international human rights issues. She is a PGA Create Alum and member of the Documentary Cinematographers Alliance and Documentary Producers Alliance.

Andrew Stefanik is a Detroit-based Director of Photography and
filmmaker. A graduate of the College for Creative Studies, he is
passionate about capturing authentic stories through a human-centered
lens. His work blends a cinematic visual style with an observational
approach across documentary, commercial, and narrative projects.

Nicole Amyx is a Mexican-American documentary filmmaker and editor. She works across short and long-form projects, using documentary filmmaking to drive change, evoke emotion, and share remarkable real-world stories with the care and purpose they deserve. Nicole has worked on a variety of documentaries that have premiered at festivals across the U.S and projects streaming on Netflix, Amazon and PBS. Some of her recent credits include: “The Chaplain and the Doctor” (SFFILM, 2025), You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment (Netflix, 2024), Make a Circle (DocLands, 2024). Nicole is also a 2023/2024 Karen Schmeer Editing Fellow.

Our Team

The storytellers behind the film.

Erin Persley

Rajal Pitroda

Erin Semine Kökdil

Stephanie Palumbo

Anna Clare Spelman

Emily Thomas

Andrew Stefanik

Nicole Amyx

Brooke Blair & Will Blair

Kristina Motwani

Sara Maamouri

Cassandra Jabola