Advisory Council

Akanksha Sood Singh
Akanksha Sood Singh is at the forefront of natural history filmmaking in India. With a career spanning 2 decades, she has produced some of the biggest wildlife films to come out of the country. Her work has been televised across the globe and won critical international acclaim. She has won four National Film Awards given by the President of India, the Diversity Leadership Award by the World Congress of Factual Producers and is one of the Jurors for the International Emmy – Documentary category. Akansha is also the founder of the Women of the Wild series in India, Pakistan and Malaysia.

Arun Dayanandan
Arun Dayanandan is a Ph.D. student at Yale University’s School of the Environment studying how industrial forestry can incorporate traditional management and restoration practices to improve biological and economic productivity while better serving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Prior to starting at Yale, Arun completed a M.Sc. in Aquatic Chemical and Behavioural Ecology in Montréal, Canada, studying fish cognition for use in marine and aquatic species restoration. Through multi-national governmental scientific support, his research has brought him to Australia, Atlantic Canada, Galapagos Islands, India, Madagascar, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka. 

Francene J. Blythe-Lewis
Francene J. Blythe-Lewis specializes in cultural education, cultural arts programming, and executive management by building sustainable grant programs, curating cultural art programming, creating philanthropic partnerships, and advocating for representation of cultural voices. Her passion to inspire others with knowledge and discovery has helped expand learning and understanding of Native peoples in the Western Hemisphere, and worldwide.Blythe-Lewis currently serves as the Executive Director at Vision Maker Media, where her father originally established the organization as the Founding Executive Director located in Lincoln, Nebraska. Vision Maker Media is largely funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to bring Native stories and content to public media. Previously, she served as the Director of Programs at the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, located in Vancouver, Washington/Portland, Oregon, where she led strategic program planning and developed art grant opportunities to Native artists and communities nationwide. There, she fostered and implemented successful grant programs for Native American: artists, community artist mentorships, and community projects that centered on social issues and partnerships in and around Native communities. Blythe-Lewis also served eight years as the Director of the All Roads Film Project at the National Geographic Society located in Washington, D.C. She steered this international Indigenous and minority-culture program into an award-winning portfolio of funded stories in film and photo-journalism. These stories were created and produced by Indigenous and minority-culture storytellers from communities around the world. Blythe-Lewis began in arts and media as a Cultural Arts Specialist at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), where she as programmed Native theater and dance performances, in partnerships with local and regional theaters, universities and museums for the inaugural NMAI stage. And just prior, she served as the Program Manager at the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, where she contributed, produced and managed cultural and archival content for the Inauguration of the World War II Memorial, the annual summer Folklife Festival, and the “First Americans Festival” on the National Mall as part of the opening celebration of the National Museum of the American Indian.She currently is a board member for the Nebraskans for The Arts; Nebraska Urban Indian Health Coalition; AGE (Advance Gender Equity in Theatre Arts),has served as a commissioner on the Washington State Arts Commission and is sought out for her advisory presence on diversity, equity and inclusion committees in the arts of all sorts. Within her hometown community of Lincoln, Nebraska, she served on the Lincoln Housing Authority Board and as an AmeriCorps worker. During her early career, she initially started her cultural education efforts by presenting workshops, titled “Unlearning Indian Stereotypes,” in the Lincoln public school system. Blythe-Lewis received a YWCA’s Tribute to Women nomination for championing cultural diversity and equity in the community leadership. Francene is a proud Native American woman, as Eastern Band Cherokee and Sisseton- Wahpeton Dakota from her father’s side, and Navajo from her mother. She is married and proud of her four grown children.