Sujata Dand is an independent documentary producer and director. Boyfriends is her most recent film. Dand followed five teenage girls for a year in an effort to better understand the complexities of teen love and teen relationships.
An Emmy Award-winning journalist, Dand worked at KERA for nine years where she produced several television documentaries in addition to Boyfriends, including Life in the Balance: The Health Care Crisis in Texas and High School: The Best and the Rest. She also contributed reports to KERA-FM.
Prior to her work with KERA, Dand was a reporter and anchor at the CBS affiliate station in Wichita Falls, Texas. She’s a graduate of Trinity University in San Antonio. She recently married and moved with her husband to Erie, Pennsylvania.
Linda Stogner is an artist with a unique voice. As a producer/director/writer/editor, she has received more than 60 film and television awards and numerous honors for her work as a stand-up comedian. She serves as producer/editor on KERA’s Boyfriends documentary project and has garnered many awards and festival placements in her tenure with the station and as an independent filmmaker.
In 2009, she received three national Gracie Awards for the documentary series Nowhere But Texas 2 produced with Therese Powell. Nowhere But Texas and the follow up series are collections of short documentaries that tell extraordinary tales of ordinary Texans. High Hopes, included in the Nowhere But Texas 2 collection, was honored with a Jury Award in the Chick Flick Film Festival hosted by the Dallas Chapter of Women in Film. She also received four Lone Star Emmy nominations for the NBT2 shorts High Hopes, Mighty Mites, and The Chip That Jack Built, a short film about the inventor of the integrated circuit. In 2008, she received a Finalist Award from the New York Festivals’ International Broadcasting Competition for her editing work on the original Nowhere But Texas and was nominated for a Lone Star Emmy.
As a performer, she headlines the popular Four Funny Females Stand-Up Comedy Tour. She appeared in an autobiographical short for the national PBS series Life 360. Adopted received a national Clarion Award from Women in Communications. She was a finalist in the Las Vegas Comedy Festival and The Funniest Woman in America Contest, and she appeared on the Joan Rivers Comedy Special. She has performed in the premiere comedy clubs of New York and Los Angeles and is the co-founder and a regular performer at the Dallas comedy club, Backdoor Comedy.
Rick Thompson is Director of Multimedia Productions for KERA-TV, the public television station serving North Texas. He is an award-winning producer with more than 30-years experience. Currently executive producer of the upcoming public television documentary Boyfriends and the ongoing KERA original series, CEO, Thompson’s previous credits as executive producer include Nowhere But Texas 1 & 2, The Texas Debates, Texas Trailblazer Barefoot Sanders, Texas Trailblazer Vivian Castleberry, A Conversation with Bill Lively, JFK: Breaking the News, Freedman’s Cemetery Memorial: A Place of Healing, and Finding Our Voice: The Dallas Gay & Lesbian Community.
In addition to KERA’s HDTV special JFK: Breaking the News, Thompson’s national public television credits include Matisse and Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry, KERA’s 26-episode cooking series New Tastes from Texas with Chef Stephan Pyles and the nationally syndicated special Child Safety: It’s No Accident.
His credits as director and editor include Bishop College: A Bridge Between the Worlds and Oka’, a short film on the history of the former Platt National Park–the only park preserved at the request of an Indian Tribe to protect the unique mineral and freshwater springs in the Arbuckle Mountains.
Under Thompson’s supervision, KERA programs have earned multiple honors, including a national Emmy nomination and regional Emmy Awards, national Gracie Awards and honors from the International Film and Television Festival of New York, the Chicago International Film Festival, the National Educational Telecommunications Association, Dallas Press Club and many others. Thompson is a 1977 graduate of Oklahoma State University with a bachelor’s degree in radio, television and film.
