The Other 50%

Kathleen has enjoyed working in the film and television industry for over 30 years. She has worked "on location" most of that time, shooting across this country as well as internationally. Over her career, she has served as Producer, Production Executive, Production Manager and Production Coordinator on feature films and most recently on TV. She is currently working on the Netflix hit 13 Reasons Why. Previous credits include Chance, Steve Jobs, San Andreas, The boy Next Door, and Because of Winn-Dixie. At one point, she was the head of production at a company called The Film Department.

We talked all about her career, how she helped organize Production Coordinators, start the Frog & Frigate, and continue her career, even after moving out of Los Angeles. It takes effort, but it's possible.

Jessie Levandov and Nina Reyes, the Co-Founders & Directors of Mala Forever. Mala Forever is an award-winning, women-run film and digital studio based in LA and NYC.

They develop and produce films, new media, and commissioned work that centers unheard voices. They are redefining the future of filmmaking through equitable production practices, and their growing community-based platform is a cultural hub for the radical femme revolution.

Jessie is an award-winning community-based filmmaker, creative director, and educator. Her queer documentary series Signified was presented by the Guggenheim Lab, and her short film The Greggs won the Spirit Award at Slamdance. Her work has been featured in publications such as Teen Vogue, Huffington Post and Them. Jessie is committed to storytelling as a tool for social justice, and served as the longtime program director of Youth Documentary Workshop at New York's Educational Video Center.

Nina is a countercultural filmmaker and creative director whose work is grounded in her point of view as a mixed-race first-generation Mexican-American and Jewish woman. Her feature-length screenplay La Paz was a finalist for the 2017 Latino Screenwriting Project; her short films, Organism and Invisible Men, have won press and played at festivals around the world including Outfest, Frameline, and HBO: New York Latino Film Festival. They both are fellow NYU alums with BFA's from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts – go violets.

Natalie Metzger is the VP of Development and Production for Vanishing Angle. Natalie is a Spirit Award nominated producer whose credits include Jim Cummings' newest film THE WEREWOLF, GREENER GRASS (Sundance, SXSW), THUNDER ROAD (Grand Jury Award - SXSW), THE ROBBERY (Sundance), MATPAT'S GAME LAB (Streamy Award), Lil Dicky's FREAKY FRIDAY (over 506 million views), HYDRANGEA (Vimeo Staff Pick), THE ARRIVAL (Jury Award - Napa Valley Film Festival), THE STOP (Vimeo Staff Pick), virtual reality miniseries GLOBAL GAMER, among numerous others.

Her directing credits include AT&T original documentary ALONE IN THE GAME (AFI Docs, Frameline, Outfest); healthcare documentary SPECIAL BLOOD (Best Feature Documentary - CWFF); PSA "Topless Women Talk NFL" (featured in Washington Post, Huffington Post, Vice); and numerous award-winning commercials and short films.

Also an accomplished writer, Metzger won the Gold Prize at the Page International Screenwriting Awards for her sci-fi script IMMORTAL.

Metzger holds a Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts and a Bachelor of Arts from Emory University

Susie Singer Carter's website bio says this: "If you asked five-year-old Susie what she wanted to be when she grew up, she'd have placed her hands defiantly on either side of her pink tutu and said, "Everything. Duh!" And that is what she has done. She's a writer, producer, actor, musician. She sat down, we became immediate friends, and talked about everything – marriage, divorce, parenting, daughtering.

She recently made an autobiographical short film about alzheimer's called My Mom and the Girl, which she'll tell us all about, and you can see her dancing hip hop on facebook all the time. She has the media company called Go Girl Media, which I will link to on my website.

Eline is creating a series about women in motocross. She got tired of waiting for someone else to do it, so like a real badass woman, she's doing it herself. Originally from Estonia, Eline is a motocross champion and the first woman in Canada to jump her dirt bike onto an airbag.

Passionate about motorcycles and filmmaking, Eline is dedicated to telling stories of badass women. With a background in creating non-fiction content for years, Diaries of Badass Chicks is her directorial scripted series debut.

She started a crowd funding for a webseries, and then realized it's much bigger than that when she received videos and encouragement from women all over the world.

For today's episode, I had a bit of serendipity. I went to the Produced By conference this summer and happened to sit down next to today's guest. Marquette Jones is a filmmaker, an attorney, a professor, and she hosts a podcast called Directing Magic, where she interviews female filmmakers. As you can imagine, we had a lot in common, so I invited her to come to my table and have a conversation. Not only did I learn a lot about her and her career, but we also talked about podcasting and what drives us to do this, and it gets to be very inside baseball. We interviewed each other just enough for both of these hosts to be uncomfortable. Enjoy. For her full bio, go to my website, which you can find at: www.theotherfiftypercent.com.

Leslie is a producer, most notably working with John Landis, on all of your favorite things, such as Three Amigos, Beverly Hills Cop III, Coming to America, Trading Places, Thriller, Sliders, Dream on, Blues Brothers 2000, Honey I Shrunk the Kids series, Crazy Heart and the list goes on and on and on, before she transitioned to being a production executive in house.

At the time of this recording, she was at Gaumont, but has since transitioned to the Head of Production for Imagine Entertainment.

She has always worked toward diversity, even and especially when she was the only woman in the room. She has incredible perspective and experience and it was such an honor to get to have this conversation.

Eleanor was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was a lover of film, writing, and storytelling from an early age. She has written and directed several short films, including Feature Presentation, about three lonely people in need of connection who find it at the movies as well as Tales from the Airwaves, a Mercury Theater-esque radio drama. She fell in love with the classics as a teenager, and is especially interested in portraying other eras. She firmly believes storytelling is one of the most powerful tools we have to empathize with and understand the lives of others.

She tells us all about her current film, Eagle Rock, which dives deep into the psychology of what might make a young woman join a cult. It's pretty fascinating.

I originally interviewed Jeffery for episode 13, which you probably have to find on the website, since the podcast apps only keep the last 100 or so up. This was before #metoo and TimesUp and we were just exploring unconscious gender bias in the workplace.

As a quick bio – Jeffery Tobias Halter is a gender strategist and the President of YWomen, a strategic consulting company focused on engaging men in women's leadership advancement. Jeffery is the former Director of Diversity Strategy for The Coca-Cola Company. He is the author of two books including WHY WOMEN, The Leadership Imperative to Advancing Women and is a two-time TEDx speaker. His clients include dozens of Fortune 500 companies and he serves on the Board of Trustees for Miss America 2.0.

Jeffery has been doing his work as a gender strategist for a long time, but I wondered how his work has ramped up and changed focus in recent days. Luckily, I got to ask him.

I sat down with Ana Lake and Jennie NystrÖm about their webseries "Tracy Buckles."

A Los Angeles-based actress originally from the Central Coast, Ana Lake has been immersed in a love of film since childhood. She made her public debut in the short film Finding Home, For Now that she wrote and starred in. The film had its world premiere at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival in 2017. She plays the title role in Tracy Buckles.

A graduate student of Clinical Psychology at Antioch University, Jennie Nystrom is an accomplished producer who enjoys collaborating with her husband on all aspects of film production. Her artistic capabilities are eclectic, and she has a deep passion for story supervision, set design, hair, make-up and costume. She is a producer, among many other jobs, on Tracy Buckles.

I spoke with both of them and we basically solved the problems of the world.