Wood drinks water to grow, fire destroys wood to fan its flames, earth covers fire to extinguish it, and water turns earth into mud. Messages and I are like water…ubiquitous. We pour into everything, can be healing and destroying, calming and agitating, nurturing and flooding, kind and cruel. We are everywhere like the ocean, uncontrollable like a waterfall, explosive like a geyser, and mysterious like fog or steam. My filmmaking and research are all very much informed by my cross-cultural experiences. The world has for years been my cross-cultural classroom. I have traveled to over 60 countries and have had the chance to do filmmaking and other media advocacy development projects in several of them: human rights education in Brazil, ethnographic research methodology in Mexico, reconciliation and peace-building in South Africa, HIV & AIDS throughout Africa, and filmmaking in Cuba, just to name a few. Each trip contributes to helping me hone my artistic vision and activism in some way, and I aspire to create social change through positive examples of personal and public empowerment.