Future Proof is a special series on the EPIC Impact Society Podcast that brings emerging creatives into conversation with innovative leaders about the future of creativity, storytelling, and work. Produced by the iWorks student creative agency at Colorado Mountain College, the project is recognized as an EPIC Impact Project, sparking a generational dialogue about how to lead and create in a time of rapid change.

Emmy winner and Academy Award & Golden Globe nominee, Bill Gerber, has spent over 30 years in the film business in several positions including President of Production at Warner Brothers Pictures. As an executive, he has had a hand in dozens of movies including: LA Confidential, JFK, Heat, You've Got Mail, Twister, The Perfect Storm, Three Kings, and the Harry Potter series. Bill established Gerber Pictures with a long-standing first-look deal with Warner Bros. He has since produced such films as A Star Is Born, Gran Torino, A Very Long Engagement,  Grudge Match, and Moonage Daydream. In 2019, Bill was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture for A Star Is Born, which he also received a Golden Globe nomination for. Bill also received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Film for A Very Long Engagement in 2005. In 2002, he was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Made for Television Movie for James Dean which James Franco received a Golden Globe for Best Actor in the title role. In 2020, Bill received a Sports Emmy for Outstanding Long Documentary for the HBO documentary series, What's My Name | Muhammed Ali. His most recent documentary with HBO, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes, premiered in August 2024. Before joining Warner Brothers, Bill was a partner at Lookout Management, a premier music management company that has over the years represented such classic rock artists as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Tom Petty, The Cars and Devo. Along with Elliot Roberts, Bill co-managed The Cars, Devo, Heaven 17, ABC, Scritti Politti and Paul Reubens. For the last 30 years Bill has served as an advisor for several companies including AOL, Authentic Brands Group, Lennar Homes, and Udio.

Conor Tomlin, originally from Delaware, moved to Colorado to pursue his passion for narrative filmmaking. A creative student at Colorado Mountain College, he is driven by a deep love for visual storytelling and a commitment to crafting emotionally grounded, compelling narratives. Conor is currently directing Future Proof, a documentary following the iWorks team’s journey through Los Angeles, and is developing a narrative short film, Lonestar, a dramatic Western. As an emerging filmmaker, he is focused on developing his voice while exploring how visual media can create shared experiences and meaningful human connection in an evolving media landscape.

Mark Millhone is a storyteller, educator, and creativity evangelist. He currently serves as Integrated Media Program Director at Colorado Mountain College’s Isaacson School of Communication, Arts and Media and Director of the Isaacson Works (“iWorks”) Creative Agency, where he mentors emerging creatives while building a next-generation model for agency-based creative education. As producer and host of the EPIC Impact Society and Strategic Play podcasts, Mark curates conversations with creative leaders across education, leadership, brand strategy, emerging technology, and the arts. 

This Future Proof conversation is part of a special series on the EPIC Impact Society Podcast that brings emerging creatives into conversation with innovative leaders about the future of creativity, storytelling, and work. Produced by the iWorks Creative Agency at Colorado Mountain College, the project is recognized as an EPIC Impact Project, sparking a generational dialogue about how to lead and create in a time of rapid change.

Dr. Steve Ralph is a faculty member at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio Business School, where he teaches creativity and innovation, leadership, and team dynamics. His research focuses on creativity, leadership development, personal disruption, pause practices, and the impact of exponential technologies. He is the founder and director of the EPIC International Summit, an award-winning global conference on creativity and social innovation recognized by BizBash as one of North America’s most innovative meetings. Dr. Ralph also consults with organizations worldwide, leading workshops and retreats on creative problem solving, innovation culture, and leadership. 

John Felix Shaw is a photographer, filmmaker, and multidisciplinary creative working at the intersection of visual media and experiential design. His work spans commercial and documentary media, live event production, and immersive installations exploring themes of consciousness, perception, and human connection. He is currently a student in the Integrated Media program at Colorado Mountain College’s Isaacson School of Communication, Arts and Media, where he is developing a portfolio that blends storytelling, creative technology, and experiential media.

Mark Millhone is a storyteller, educator, and creativity evangelist. He currently serves as Integrated Media Program Director at Colorado Mountain College’s Isaacson School of Communication, Arts and Media and Director of the Isaacson Works (“iWorks”) Creative Agency, where he mentors emerging creatives while building a next-generation model for agency-based creative education. As producer and host of the EPIC Impact Society and Strategic Play podcasts, Mark curates conversations with creative leaders across education, leadership, brand strategy, emerging technology, and the arts. 

Paul Propster is a seasoned-storyteller, strategy-lover, line-blurrer, dot-connector, and message-driven professional. 

With more than 20 years in Business Development and Capture, Paul has a knack for engineering engagement that builds emotional investment in stakeholders driving impact, enrollment, and funding. Paul’s recent 10.5-year mission at NASA/JPL began with capturing nearly $200M in mission funding his first 2 years, co-leading JPL’s Proposal Shop, becoming Sr Staff to the Formulation Office and in the end, helped capture billions of dollars for NASA/JPL.

Paul's knack for “communicating complexity” and the “right kind of crazy” led to him establishing NASA’s first “story accelerator”: StoryLab. As Founder and Chief Story Architect of this strategic communications shop, StoryLab leverages the power of storytelling and narrative thinking to amplify JPL's impact on humanity.

He has successfully executed large scale ecosystem campaigns ranging from billion-dollar science missions like Mars Sample Return to unveiling the habitability of Venus to finding the biosignatures of life on other worlds. These campaigns involved creating and leading a strategic communications plan including executive, crisis, and internal communications, managing multi-stakeholder interests, and building emotional investment that drives impact, enrollment, and funding.

Paul has consulted or spoke on capture strategy and the power of a kindred quest through a shared story with NASA HQ and other NASA centers, the UNDP, Boston Consulting Group, Google X Moonshot Factory, Caltech, Pepperdine, CSUN, ASU, CalArts, Art Center, SXSW, C2 Montreal, California Science Center, Exploratorium, and several other Institutions across the globe.

About Global Day of Unplugging and the Unplug Collaborative

Global Day of Unplugging® (GDU) is an annual awareness campaign, celebrated the first weekend in March. Visit www.globaldayofunplugging.org to learn more.  Unplugged Collective was the recipient of the 2024 EPIC Impact Award.  

Kim Anenberg Cavallo, Co-Founder & Co-Executive Director, Unplug Collaborative. 

With 25 years experience raising money for nonprofit organizations, event planning and building community, Kim has been passionately focused on the intersection of social impact and digital wellbeing since she founded lilspace in 2016 — where the Unplug for a Cause® concept was born. Now a part of the nonprofit organization behind Global Day of Unplugging, Unplug for a Cause® is a feature of the resource center that provides support for people to spend their time being of service, gathering in person, and generally prioritizing social wellness and healthy tech habits. Kim has served on multiple nonprofit boards, and is the co-founder of the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival which will celebrate its 20 year anniversary in 2026. Kim is also currently on the Board for Sound Mind Live and is the COO at Done Deal Management.

Claudia Erickson (BSW, MPH), Co-Founder & Co-Executive Director, Unplug Collaborative. 

Claudia is a Digital Wellness expert, community strategist, dedicated to restoring authentic human connection. As the Co-Executive Director of the Unplug Collaborative as well as Public Health Advisor to the Ethan Dallas Hopeful Hearts Foundation, she is at the forefront of the global movement to help others reclaim their offline lives. Claudia’s work is rooted in the philosophy that it takes a village to navigate today’s digital landscape. Drawing on a 30-year foundation in Social Work and Public Health, she spearheads strategic planning and global partnerships to build the support systems that make unplugging possible. She advocates that digital wellness is rarely a solo journey, but rather a collective effort fueled by shared accountability and community-driven infrastructure. Aside from speaking engagements, Claudia can be found leading hands-on activities and community-driven events designed to give people the tools and social permission to step away from their screens together.

As the 2019 LA Lakers Business Woman and the 2015 CA Charter Teacher of the Year, Genein Letford is a national thought leader and creator of the concept of ‘Prismatic Leadership’, ‘Intercultural Creativity® and NeuroSomatic Creativity®’.  She is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of CAFFE Strategies, LLC which is a consulting, coaching and training company that trains C-Suite executives and employees to create sustainable organizational equity and inclusion strategies, based on neuroscience, while unleashing their innovative thinking for themselves and in their businesses.

Genein Letford Social Media:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/genein/
https://www.facebook.com/GeneinSpeaks/
https://twitter.com/GeneinLetford
www.instagram.com/geneinletford/

Niclas Gillis is an award-winning screenwriter and film director from Stockholm, Sweden, currently in pre-production on The Nix, a scandinavian folklore drama film starring Academy Award-winning actor Liv Ullmann. The film is produced by Patrik Andersson (Midsommar), with distribution by Nordisk Film.

Gillis first garnered attention for his drama short film Hold Me Down, which depicted a day in the life of a 19-year-old single mother and sex worker in The Bronx, New York, where Gillis lived for 11 years. The film was based on true events and featured a cast consisting entirely of real life survivors of sexual exploitation and domestic abuse. Through a partnership with the NGO, Project Rousseau, the women involved were able to escape the clutches of prostitution, gain access to safe housing and higher education. Hold Me Down received universal praise by critics, including CNN, and won the award for Best Short Film at the Harlem International Film Festival.

His fashion film for Native Son was compared to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema by New York Magazine, and he has been championed as “the premiere talent to watch” by Nike. He is currently represented by XYZ Films in the US.

Dorte Nielsen is the founder of Creative Thinker and Center for Creative Thinking. 

Dorte is a creativity expert, author and keynote speaker. Born in Denmark, she studied at The Graphic Arts Institute of Denmark and later at The School of Communication Arts in London. Dorte Nielsen holds a Master of Science degree in Creativity from the International Center for Studies in Creativity, Buffalo, New York, where she was awarded the Firestein Family Creative Achievement Award for her graduate work.

 For most of the 90’s Dorte Nielsen worked in advertising in London. Her creative work won her recognition at the Cannes International Advertising Festival, D&AD, the British Television Awards, Epica, London International Advertising Awards, Campaign Poster Awards among others.

 Since moving back to Denmark, Dorte Nielsen has been teaching and researching creative thinking at the Danish School of Media and Journalism, where she founded the Creative Communication education, a bachelor degree programme for art directors and conceptual thinkers. Under her leadership Creative Communication became one of the most award-winning advertising bachelor programmes in the world.

 After her success training creativity at university level, Dorte Nielsen took her uniquely effective creativity curriculum to primary schools. Dorte Nielsen is the author of eight books and numerous articles on creativity and creative thinking.

 Dorte Nielsen is the founder of FourSight Denmark and holds the position of Chairman of Creative Circle, the Danish society for the creative industries, which holds the biggest creative award show in Scandinavia, celebrating creative excellence.

James Haven is a social innovator, director, and founder of Safe Haven protecting the rights and laws that safeguard children. He is dedicated to youth-related causes around the world, developing comprehensive solutions to this incalculable systemic problem. His mission is to ensure that children are guaranteed their fundamental human rights to a safe childhood.

Meshach Weber applies behavioral science, applied anthropology, and cognitive empathy to create more human-centric and impactful digital spaces, marketing, and content.

Recognizing that marketing often lacked rigor and specificity, Meshach created science-based frameworks to illuminate a repeatable path to success. Harnessing the irrational yet predictable science of human behavior, his unique, evidence-based approaches create humane experiences that nurture deeper engagement and enduring affinity—driving sustainable growth for social impact organizations, startups, and Fortune 200s.

His mentorship on growth mindset and the science of behavior change has also driven positive company culture change for both fledgling startups and global enterprise businesses.

Sarah Thurber is a creativity evangelist.

She’s an author, speaker, and researcher on the subjects of creative thinking and collaborative problem solving. In 2010, when she started her Master of Science degree in Creativity and Change Leadership at Buffalo State University, she made a personal pact to spread the science of creativity more widely through the world. That year, she took over as Managing Partner of FourSight, publisher of the FourSight ThinkingProfile assessment. Working with researchers, consultants, and the FourSight team, Sarah grew the FourSight business six-fold and built up a database of more than six million data points on cognitive diversity.

Now serving corporations including Disney, Nike, Intel, Mars, and GrubHub as well as teams in government, special forces and military intelligence, FourSight has become a premier purveyor of science-based training in creativity.

Sarah is a coauthor of The Secret of the Highly Creative Thinker, Creativity Unbound, and Facilitation: A Door to Creative Leadership all of which have been translated into multiple languages.