Our board is staffed by volunteers from the community who work together to create and manage all of WIF-PDX’s programs and events. The current WIF-PDX board of directors are comprised of professionals working in visual media in varying capacities. Our collected experience is broad and includes: music licensing, producing and writing for companies such as PBS, OPB, and KGW, screenwriting, documentary film directing, production coordinating for animation, teaching film, acting, journalism, and film distribution.
Learn more about our Board below!
STEPHANIE HOUGH
PRESIDENT // stephanie@wifpdx.org
Stephanie Hough (she/her) is an independent filmmaker whose films have screened globally, including the Portland International Film Festival, Tacoma Film Festival, McMinnville Short Film Festival, Engauge Film Festival, BendFilm, TriBeca Film Center, Lacuna Festival and more. She has worked with film festivals including BendFilm, Sundance, Denver Film, Palm Springs International Film Festival, and the Portland International Film Festival. She spent a decade with the Northwest Film Center as Equipment Manager and Educator. Commercially, she has worked as a Producer with Alpha Media, as Health & Safety Manager (TLC, The History Channel, MTV/Viacom) and recently as an Associate Producer with TLC. As an educator she shares the joys of analog filmmaking techniques with the community.
ELIZABETH WEISSENBORN
TREASURER // treasurer@wifpdx.org
Elizabeth is originally from Silver Spring, MD, but has been in Portland for over a decade and now feels like an Oregonian. Her background in Anthropology informs her view of documentary filmmaking and she sees empathy as a powerful tool in storytelling for connecting with the viewer. Her personal projects range from short films about Argentine Tango dancing to tenants rights issues and displacement in Portland. She was First Assistant Editor on the feature documentary film SEED: The Untold Story and currently works as a freelance DAM Archivist for Mercy Corps.
CHRISTI CLAY
Christi owns and manages the music production company Beneath The Trees Music and has been licensing music for films, television, and other visual media for over a decade. In her past, she has worked for Fortune 500 tech companies in many varied roles including business strategy, contract management, and mechanical engineering. She is passionate about creating opportunities for women to succeed in the workplace. When she’s not pulling music for film projects or managing her children’s play schedules, you can find her in the forest. She’ll be the one in the hammock, reading and trying not to spill hot tea in her lap.
MELINA KIYOMI COUMAS
Originally from O’ahu, Hawai’i, Melina has made Portland my home base for a decade now. With a B.A. in Film Studies from Portland State University, she creates short experimental film works that have screened both locally and internationally. She primarily shoots on celluloid film formats (particularly Super 8 and 16mm), with her work exploring themes surrounding memory, identity, and perception. In recent years, She has been working at film festivals and arts organizations, offering services in artist support, event production, coordination, and festival programming. She is currently the Programming Manager at the Hawai’i International Film Festival, and the Films + Grant Manager at the Filmed by Bike Film Festival.
JOANIE FOX
Joanie Fox is a writer, producer, and director living in Portland, Oregon who began a career in the arts at the age of 11 dancing with Ballet West. At 17, she moved to Boston to train and dance professionally before moving to New York City to perform on Broadway at Radio City Music Hall with “The Wizard of Oz, Live”. From there, Joanie went on to do national tours and off-Broadway productions before studying acting and moving to Los Angeles, where she landed a recurring role on the hit TV Series ER, along with numerous film and TV appearances including Grey’s Anatomy, JAG and The Fighting Temptations. Joanie produced the North American premiere of Wedding Dress at Theatre 40 in Los Angeles after being granted the rights by the family of Nelson Rodríguez, Brazil’s most prolific writer, poet and playwright. The play received numerous Ovation awards and began her journey into producing. Fox is also the writer of Skater Boy with Paramount Pictures and MTV Films and her original screenplay, Arranging Mia was an official selection and award winner at the LGBT Toronto Film Festival 2017. Fox is the director and producer of the award winning short film documentary, The Joy Block and the director and producer of “Rise,” a music video for the newest single from Pink Martini’s China Forbes. Joanie is currently directing and producing Beatlore, a feature documentary about Derek Rieth, the late percussionist with Pink Martini who died by suicide in 2014.
SARA HOFSTEIN
Sara’s film and TV career began in New York City with positions on NBC’s KINGS in post-production and on ABC’s soap operas in programming, as well as casting seasons 6 and 7 of Food Network’s CHOPPED. After graduating from college, Sara was the Business and Legal Affairs Coordinator at Atlas Media Corp, an independent television producer in New York, where she worked on TV shows for E! Entertainment, MTV, National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel. Sara made the jump into animation upon moving to Vienna, Austria, where she was a production coordinator on seasons 2 and 3 of TALKING TOM AND FRIENDS, and later became a production manager on ROTZBUB, Austria’s first CG animated feature, which premiered in competition at the 2021 Annecy International Animation Film Festival. She moved to Portland in December 2021 and soon after joined the crew of Netflix’s WENDELL AND WILD as a VFX coordinator. She is a proud member of WIF-PDX, ASIFA-Hollywood, Women in Animation, and the Television Academy.
EMILY LAUE
Emily has worked in feature films, shorts, commercials, and music videos in Portland, Seattle, LA, and NY as a writer, producer, director, assistant director, and actor. Her directing work has played at festivals such as Oregon Independent, Katra, and Bend. Her acting work has screened at Festivals in Whistler, Calgary, and at MoMA in NYC. A graduate of Stonybrook/Killer Films Graduate Film Directing program and the University of British Columbia’s BFA Theatre Acting program, she currently freelances on Portland and New York-based film projects, works as a voice actor, dabbles in acting and is writing her next films.
DARIA MATZA
Daria’s passion is storytelling which taken her to work for PBS, MSNBC, Efilm and many independent producers before striking out on her own in 2006 to produce, direct and edit films, documentaries, and commercials with her husband. Some of the highlights include editing an Emmy award winning documentary, An Inaugural Ride to Freedom, producing a feature-length horror film which premiered on Showtime, Angels of Darkness, and directing and editing a feature documentary, Rise of the Giants. She has a B.S. in Broadcast Journalism and M.A. in Film, Television and New Media. In addition to making films, she’s been teaching college courses in film, editing, and media literacy for 15 years. She is currently teaching for Pierce College, Clackamas Community College, and producing a podcast.
COLLEEN SIVITER
After several years in NYC and LA, Colleen came back in Portland in 2020 where she was born and raised and still has amazing community. They work as a producer, currently for MTVE/Paramount/SHOWTIME managing promos for shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race, original movies social impact campaigns. She also works as a writing consultant and strategic partner in creative development for artists, writers and filmmakers. They have an M.A. from Parsons School of Design and writing has appeared in a LAMBDA award-winning anthology, magazines, art publications and scholarly journals.
NATALIE TAYLOR
Natalie is a nonfiction and documentary producer based in Portland, Oregon. Currently, she works at Blue Chalk Media, creating everything from branded content for clients like TIME Magazine, the New York Times, and Nike, to educational videos for Pearson Education. Most recently, she was the showrunner and director on a docuseries for the Magnolia Network called From the Source, in which a chef explores the backstories of ingredients she loves.
ADDISON WOODSIDE
Addison (she/they) is a writer, filmmaker, and co-founder of Woodland Sung Productions, a non-profit production company that offers holistic support to emerging media artists. Their undergraduate thesis film The Woodside Sisters Present was an official selection of the Portland International Film Festival in 2020 and her current project Beaver State is a comedy variety show about Oregon. Her work is often a funhouse mirror of her real life with a focus on spirituality, identity, and disability. After growing up in four different countries outside of the U.S., they seek to collaborate with creators from around the world in underserved communities.