Company Profile
Not for Profit
The purpose of ‘the corporation’ shall be to advance the understanding, enterprise and sustainability of a culture of peace for all humanity, through various formats of education and dissemination of information media, including, yet not limited to, theatrical film, stage performances, television arts and programming and other information projects, as well as festivals, conferences, and conventions, all into the purpose of education toward the establishment and sustainability of a culture of peace and nonviolence.
Administration
Nick Angotti - Executive Director:
Nick Angotti is the Executive Director of the highly successful 2008 Peace On Earth Film Festival, with 214 international films submitted and 40 selected films over this past Labor Day weekend. Nick Angotti is a former professional actor of 25 years (Los Angeles / New York), yet he has worked on-camera and behind the scenes. As an Independent Producer at Chicago Access Network Television, since 1997, he continues to offer his own TV Show, Say Yes to Life.
Nick also created and developed, and acted as Supervising Producer at CAN-TV the following shows:
- Restorative Justice in Action, an 11 part series created for the City Wide Restorative Justice Committee and hosted by Judge Sophia H Hall, 2007-08.
- In early 2009, a nine part mini-series: Season for Nonviolence – Chicago Youth, which highlighted the efforts of Chicago’s youth working on alternatives to violence for themselves and their community.
Nick Angotti is currently offering scholarships and mentoring young adults through the producer training at CAN-TV, encouraging them to continue his work in these alternatives to violence efforts.
Through the Stean Center of the DePaul University and students of the computer classes of DePaul, Nick has guided the creation of a web site to amplify the work of restorative justice around the world. He further has edited over 100 1 to 2 minute clips from the Restorative Justice in Action CAN-TV production to be highlighted on this web site.
Nick is a member of the City-Wide Restorative Justice Committee, since 2007.
Nick Angotti established Transcendence Global Media, NFP, to present the Peace on Earth Film Festival and other media ventures to plant seeds toward building a culture of peace and nonviolence for all humanity.
Board Members
Milissa Pacelli
Writer/Actor/Director
Supervisor, Public Affairs Office, Office of the Chief Judge Circuit Court of Cook County
Board President
In March of 2009, the world premiere commercial production of The Quiet Man Tales, a play Pacelli co-wrote and co-produced opened at The Chicago Theatre Downstairs, to critical acclaim and a 2009 Joseph Jefferson Award Nomination for New Adaptation-Play. She directed the first two public readings of The Quiet Man Tales at Theatre Building Chicago. Pacelli has written, produced and directed both play and video productions for legal education for children and adults at the Circuit Court of Cook County for over two decades. She served as the Artistic Director of The Fairy Trials Productions, a nationally recognized touring children's theatre company that adapts fairy tales into courtroom dramas. Little Red Driving Hood, a driver's education film, for which she served as Associate Producer and Second Unit Director, received an Honorable Mention at The Chicago International Children's Film Festival. She has co-written a play about domestic violence for the court, Everybody Doesn’t Know. She served as the Director of Operations for the 2008 POEFF. Acting credits include: Dancing at the Revolution for Thunder & Lightning Ensemble, Embedded at Prop Theater., Polling Place for Smock Alley Theater Co. and Kabuki Medea at Wisdom Bridge. She received her MFA in Acting from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Robert C. Koehler
Writer and former Editor at Tribune Media Services
Secretary
Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, former editor at Tribune Media Services and a nationally syndicated writer. Mr. Koehler also writes his own weekly internet column Common Wonders.
Gail Galivan
Alternative Health Practitioner and Instructor
Treasurer
Gail Galivan is a healing arts professional and research consultant for hospitals, wellness centers and fitness centers in the field of Integrative Medicine. Raising five children quickly motivated her to find peace within, and she was inspired to develop the skills necessary to share her discoveries with others. Her previous careers involved management and bookkeeping in the fields of Law and Finance.
Edith Crigler
Associate Executive Director of Program Development for the Chicago Area Project
Trustee
Edith L. Crigler has served in a variety of Human Service and Community Based Organizations in Chicago for over 20 years. Ms. Crigler is currently the Associate Executive Director of Program Development for the Chicago Area Project (CAP), a private not-for-profit organization with of over sixty years of work in delinquency prevention and service in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. She was the first and only Director of the African American Caucus for the Family Resource Coalition of America (FRCA).
John D. Hancock
Director, screenwriter, producer, musician
Owner of FILMACRES Production Company in La Porte, IN
Trustee
Oscar Nominated and an OBIE Award-winning theater director John Hancock has worked in the creative elements of Film, television and theatrical production, as a writer, producer and director.
His film credits include: "Bang the Drum Slowly" (Robert De Niro and Michael Moriarty), "Weeds" (Nick Nolte), a unique character study of cons-on-the-boards, based on Rick Cluchey's real-life experiences with the San Quentin Drama Group, co-writing with wife Dorothy Tristan, and the 2001 “Pracer”. John’s TV direction was throughout the 1980s and 1990's, helming episodes of NBC's "Hill Street Blues" and CBS' "The Twilight Zone", among others.
In 1998, he opened his own production company FILMACRES in LaPorte, IN. He has produced and directed the feature film "A Piece of Eden" in 1999 and directed the suspense thriller "Suspended Animation" in 2003.
Paul A. Kakuris
President, Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society
Trustee
Paul Kakuris has been an environmental professional and a coastal consultant since 1974. He specializes in coastal environmental issues including coastal processes. Paul is the co-inventor of shore protection designs that simulate a coral reef action in the near-shore coastal environment and the inventor of military personnel protection devices. Paul Kakuris is the president of the Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society and the driving force behind Dunesland’s efforts to preserve and protect the Illinois shoreline and correct the asbestos and other contamination on the Lake Michigan shoreline and at Illinois Beach State Park. He has been a dedicated Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society volunteer for more than a decade.
Jeannette Kravitz
Executive Director of sponsorKIDS®, Co-Owner of Juvenesse Spa & Cosmetics in Chicago
Trustee
Jeannette Kravitz is the Executive Director of sponsorKIDS® a Charities 501c3. Mrs. Kravitz corporate experience is in Operations Management, Marketing and Public Relations as she served as Regional Operations Manager at Photography Corporation of America. Her Division ranked in the top 10% in profits globally, with the lowest employee turnover in the nation. In 2000, she founded sponsorKIDs Charities Peace Journey and began documenting stories of American teens helping kids on foreign soil in an effort to bring understanding of diverse cultures. She arranged music concerts with major artists to help raise funds and awareness. As a documentary director along with Viacom Division, BET TV (Black Entertainment TV) Jeannette co-produced a 30 minute special called Peace Journey, which won a coveted Telly Award for editing. She has gained major sponsor support and in her career, has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for non-profits through charity events including celebrity golf tournaments, tennis events including World Team Tennis/Elton John/NBC Sports fundraiser to benefit Pediatric AIDS and more.
Advisory Board
Mary Jeanne Larrabee, Ph.D.
Director of the DePaul University Peace/Conflict Resolution/Social Justice Studies Program
Mary Jeanne Larrabee is the Director of the DePaul University Peace/Conflict Resolution/Social Justice Studies Program; she received her recognition as a Professor of Philosophy form the University of Toronto.
Professor Larrabee is the former director of the women's studies program in the mid-1980s, and is the editor of An Ethic of Care. She has published numerous articles in phenomenology, Husserl studies, feminism, Asian philosophy and gender studies, and is currently researching theories of experience and the self within multiply cultural contexts. She has taught courses in feminist ethics, epistemology and peace studies; Husserl's time theory, ideas, crisis and genetic phenomenology; theories of subjectivity; postmodernism; logic; and Asian philosophies (Hinduism and Buddhism).
Adele Meyer
Director of Program Development at the American Bar Association
Addie Meyer has been Director of Program Development at the American Bar Association for 15 years. She holds degrees in English Literature and Chinese Language from the University of California at Berkeley, where she also did graduate work in Central Asian history. She edited Focus on Asian Studies, a magazine for pre-college social studies teachers published by The Asia Society in New York. She was Director of Development for the Illinois Chapter of The Nature Conservancy and Coordinator of Foundation and Government Grants for the Museum of Natural History in New York. She was Annual Giving Manager at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She has been a volunteer development consultant to Henry Street Settlement, New York and Musica de Camera, New York. She worked as a community organizer with the American Indian community as a VISTA Volunteer at Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico., and as a development consultant to the Ned A. Hatathil Museum, Navajo Community College, Tsaile, Arizona and to Wanuskewin Heritage Park, Saskatchewan, Canada. She has also consulted on program development and fundraising for Friends of the Chicago River, Chicago, and The Jung Institute, Evanston, Illinois.