User:Kambai Akau/Mehret Mandefro

Mehret Mandefro is an award-winning Ethiopian-American film/television producer, writer, physician and anthropologist. She is the group leader of the Indaba Africa, a co-founder of Realness Institute and co-founder of Truth Aid Media and is a board member of advisors for the shared Harvest Fund. She is also a Soros Fellow (2001) and in 2007 sat as one of the 41 distinguished New American panelists. In 2016, she was honoured by Carnegie Corporation of New York as one of America's Great Immigrants.

Education
Mandefro studied medicine at Harvard University.

Career
In March 2014, she was one of the women honoured in the International Women’s Day celebration in New York, by WomenWerk. Also in 2014, she co-produced the film Difret, directed by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari.

She co-executive produced a 2019 Zeresenay Berhane film titled, Sweetness in the Belly, alongside Adrian Sturges, Laura Bickford and Fiona Druckenmiller. In the same year, the documentary she co-directed and co-produced titled, "The Loving Generation", was nominated for a Webby People's Voice Award. The film was officially confirmed alongside three others to be internationally premiered at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival held at Palais Des Festivals, Cannes, France, she advised African filmmakers to build strategic partnerships by collaborating with one another, pointing out that other Africa countries can learn from Nollywood to improve on their film industries.

She, alongside film director Abraham Gezahagne, in February 2020 represented Ethiopia at the Berlinale Africa Hub, whereat she presented the opportunities available in and challenges faced by the film and TV industry the country.

She, alongside Alicia Keys, Lacey Schwartz Delgado, Elliott Halpern and Elizabeth Trojian, executive produced the documentary, How It Feels To Be Free, based on the Ruth Feldstein's book, How It Feels To Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement, directed by Yoruba Richen and is to be premiered in winter 2021 by PBS and WNET.