About Us - Staff

David Sweeney, Executive Director

David Sweeney has a background in non-profit organizations, HIV Prevention and gay community building. Initially working with homeless adolescents, he went on to work with a number of other HIV/AIDS Service organizations in Austin, and with the University of California, San Francisco / Center for AIDS Prevention Studies in projects both here, and in San Francisco. David is one of the four national trainers for The Mpowerment Project, which is a community building HIV prevention program targeting young gay and bisexual men, and one the few Center for Disease Control approved HIV Interventions with Evidence of Effectiveness.

David is also an accomplished artist and is trying to find a little extra time outside of planning the festival to draw some of his scary little pictures.

David is lucky to be a part of the new executive team building a stronger, sleeker, more responsive community-based visual arts and cultural organization. Join him and us at aGLIFF 21!

 

Collin Acock, Development Director

Screenwriter and Playwright Collin Acock shares his time with us and Resolute Productions where he has worked for the past 3 years as Story Producer developing film, television, and web content. He is Writer and Associate Producer on their most recent project, Mainstream Green. He is a two-time Schubert Fellowship recipient and received his MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005. A native Texan, he has lived in Austin, off and on, for the past 10 years.

As Development Director, Collin is excited to join the executive team, build aGLIFF’s fund development, and continue to foster relationships with Austin’s non-profit community.

Lisa Kaselak, Programming Director

Lisa received her undergraduate degree in Environmental Resource Management and spent most of the early 90's working in non-profit environmental and consumer advocacy. A desire to pay off student loans transitioned her to web producing and usability consulting for Fortune 500 and 1000 corporations. In 2000 she quit the corporate sector to focus on exploring ways to better communicate her ideas with the world.

Lisa's first documentary, The Soup Peddler, aired nationally on PBS in the 2005 broadcast season. Her second doc, Let Them Eat Cake, was nominated for a student Academy Award, and her first narrative film, Repetition With Variation, was one of four American films selected to screen at the prestigious Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival in France. For more information, please visit http://www.fosforofilms.com.

In addition to producing her own projects, Lisa also works as a co-producer, cinematographer and editor. Lisa received her MFA in film production from the University of Texas in May, 2006.

 

Ajae Clearway, Festival Director

Filmmaker Ajae Clearway has worked for over ten years in various capacities on numerous independent and studio features. A sample of her credits includes: Analyze That (Harold Ramis), Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair), Girlfight (Karen Kusama), The Company (Robert Altman), Before Sunset and A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater). She produced an experimental narrative feature Pretend (Julie Talen), which premiered at Lincoln Center and MoMa, and received a glowing review in the New York Times. Clearway has written, directed, and produced various short films and an internationally acclaimed, award-winning documentary One in 2000, which screened at aGLIFF, 2006.