Melissa Thompson

Melissa Thompson

Workshop Leader

CMG is pleased to announce that award-winning filmmaker and activist Melissa Thompson will be co-leading both the Healthy Oceans Workshop and the Islands & Climate Workshop.  Melissa found her way to filmmaking through activism. She has worked on countless advocacy videos for community and social issue groups, including Greenpeace, the National Women's Law Center, Ipas, the Better Block Project, and most recently Edutopia's Schools that Work initiative. In 2011 she edited the award-winning documentary, Married in Spandex. Her own documentaries have screened worldwide, from the Duke Center for Documentary Studies to the Cork Film Festival. She is a recipient of grants from Fulbright and the Princess Grace Foundation. She is a repeat-presenter at American University's School for Environmental Filmmaking, the American Conservation Film Fest, and has given multiple webinars about how non-profits can use traditional video, as well as micro film platforms like Vine and Instagram, to win campaigns.

Melissa brings with her a plethora of conservation film experience that will excite and inspire workshop attendees. Melissa is a former senior video producer at Greenpeace where she produced, shot and edited web videos, news packages, PSAs and documentaries.  In 2014 her Greenpeace video team led a project called Postcards from Climate Change, a collection of shorts from filmmakers around the country which  screened at Wild and Scenic, the San Francisco Green Film Festival, and online at postcardsfromclimatechange.org.