The Sundance Institute Founder Series: Robert Redford’s Impact on Conservationism and Climate Storytelling

Jill Tidman (she/her) is Executive Director of The Redford Center, an independent nonprofit organization founded in 2005 by Robert Redford and his son James Redford. Jill has worked with the organization since its founding and took the helm in 2012 to lead the vision, strategy, and operations in service of advancing environmental solutions through the power of stories that move people to act. She has produced three award-winning feature documentaries and impact campaigns, and draws on her experience as a writer, filmmaker, and activist, and her passion for sustainability and environmental justice, to create a new way forward for impactful environmental films. With over 25 years of experience as an activist and storyteller, Jill has raised millions of dollars for environmentally engaged artists and film projects that serve as powerful education, communication, and activation tools. 

Prior to The Redford Center, Jill led projects for Business for Social Responsibility, Social Venture Network, The Natural Step, and Global Footprint Network, and she serves on the board of the KindHumans Foundations. Jill was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her short fiction and resides with her family on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone tribe in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Louie Psihoyos is a world renown National Geographic photographer and Oscar-winning director whose mission is to use storytelling to shift humanity to a more sustainable and compassionate future. He is co-founder and Executive Director of the Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS), a California-based non-profit organization. His first film, The Cove, is an eco-thriller that exposed the brutal slaughter of small cetaceans in Japan and became one the most acclaimed documentaries in film history. The activism around that Oscar-winning film helped reduce dolphin and porpoise slaughter in Japan over 93%. 

He and his team’s projection events of endangered species on iconic buildings for their film, Racing Extinction, received over 5.4 billion media views and led to laws that protect some of the earth’s most endangered species. Over 75% of the world’s interest in shifting towards a plant-based diet has been attributed to his 3rd film, The Game Changers, a film about plant-based super athletes. He co-directed Mission: Joy a buddy film about how to find joy in a world of full of sorrow and features his Holiness, The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. His Netflix series, You Are What you Eat: A Twin Experiment has been seen around the world by 10's of million of people and continues to nudge the world closer to a healthier and more sustainable future. 

Erica Elson is a Producer, Writer and Educator based in the mountains outside Los Angeles. Her short film, WING NIGHT, premiered at Method Fest in Los Angeles. She is the co-author of the book THE AWKWARD HUMAN SURVIVAL GUIDE and co-hosted a podcast by the same name on the 5by5 network for five years. Elson's articles have been published by HuffPost, Lifehacker, and Reader's Digest. Prior to working in education, she worked in television development and writers’ rooms such as VH1’s HINDSIGHT, where she had the chance to write for the spinoff web series PLANET SEBASTIAN.

Elson joined the Sundance Collab team in October 2021 and produces courses, Master Classes, and events in the areas of screenwriting, television writing, directing, producing, and documentary filmmaking. She has moderated conversations with Sofia Coppola, Richard Linklater, Alexander Payne, and Susannah Grant, among others.

Prior to Sundance, Elson was the Thesis Production Supervisor at the American Film Institute for five years. She oversaw several award-winning graduate thesis films, notably the 2021 BAFTA student film winner APART, TOGETHER and the 2023 Sundance Film Festival short WE WERE MEANT TO. While at AFI, Elson developed a passion for sustainable production and created the Green Film School Alliance, which includes forty schools on four continents. She holds a BA in Communication and Film Studies from Concordia University and an MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute.