:: who we are - staff

Amy Hill is the Founder and Director of Silence Speaks. She is a digital video instructor/producer and public health consultant whose twelve-year history of involvement with women’s health and violence prevention program and policy initiatives led her in 2000 to found the initiative. As part of her work with Silence Speaks, Amy has integrated art therapy, trauma theory, popular education, participatory video, and media advocacy principles with digital storytelling methods. She has also developed innovative ways to make the key elements of digital storytelling – a focus on personal narrative, group processes, and hands-on production activities – relevant in environments around the world where literacy and technology access are low. Prior to joining the staff at the Center for Digital Storytelling, Amy co-produced and edited a series of educational documentaries about HIV and AIDS in Ethiopia. She has a BA in British & American Literature from Scripps College and a Master’s in Gender Studies from Stanford University.

Bessie Dvora China Leipakumakaniokalani Ching (China Ching) has a lengthy history of teaching video production and digital storytelling, including multiple sessions in the U.S. and Africa with Silence Speaks. China was a founding member of Third World Majority, a new media training and production resource center, where she was the Director of Circle of Voices, a Native-specific training program. She also worked for four years at the National Native American AIDS Prevention Center, where she developed a media campaign to address HIV-stigma in Native communities and authored a media production-based HIV prevention curriculum for Native teens. China received a BA in Hispanic Studies from Connecticut College and a Master’s in Oral History from Columbia University.

Gayle Nicholls-Ali is the Southern California Region Director at the Center for Digital Storytelling and a workshop facilitator with Silence Speaks. An award winning fine arts photographer, documentarian, and digital storytelling facilitator, Gayle was born in Barbados and raised there and in Brooklyn. She was Poet Laureate at Hunter College, where she produced a series of poetry magazines and coordinated multimedia poetry readings. More recently, Gayle worked as a multimedia assistant teacher and web designer at Pasadena City College. She has a BA from Mt. Holyoke College and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Human Development, with a focus on Storytelling as Art Therapy, at Pacific Oaks College in Los Angeles.

Andrea Spagat is the Northern California/Pacific Northwest Region Director at the Center for Digital Storytelling and a workshop facilitator with Silence Speaks. Raised by her bilingual/bicultural family in both Argentina and the United States, her diverse professional experience includes developing a training program for rural schoolteachers in Bolivia, running a jail GED project in Wisconsin, and coordinating a youth substance abuse prevention initiative in San Francisco. From 1999 to 2001, Andrea was a Violence Prevention Academic Fellow with the California Wellness Foundation, focusing on aftercare services for youth exiting detention facilities. She has a BA in International Relations and Spanish from the University of California at Davis and a Master’s in Adult Education from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Note: other staff at the Center for Digital Storytelling have also taught Silence Speaks workshops. View complete list of staff bios.