Speaker

Brian Grazer

Oscar and Emmy-winning Producer, Best-selling Author

Brian Grazer is an Academy Award, Golden Globe, Emmy, and Grammy Award-winning producer. His productions have been nominated for 43 Oscars® and 198 Emmys and he won the Best Picture Oscar for A Beautiful Mind. He is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life, and Face to Face: The Art of Human Connection.

Grazer produced beloved films including Apollo 13, American Gangster, 8 Mile, Frost/Nixon, Liar Liar, and Parenthood. His television series include Empire, 24, Arrested Development, and Friday Night Lights to name but a few. Documentaries include Beatles: 8 Days a Week, Pavarotti, Rebuilding Paradise and many others.

Most recently, Grazer co-founded a content accelerator named Imagine Impact to discover, cultivate and empower creative storytellers from around the world. Impact has built a community of 23,000 writers across 80+ countries.

Time Magazine named him one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.” Grazer feels passionate about creating good in the world, and has been honored for his global humanitarian work by organizations including the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation, the Alfred Mann Foundation, the Alzheimer’s Association, World of Children and the Atlantic Council. He serves on the Board of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he also teaches a course on “Starting from Zero.”

Grazer and his longtime friend Ron Howard founded Imagine Entertainment, now one of the longest running partnerships in Hollywood. They continue to run the company together as executive chairmen.

Photo credit: Sage Glazer

Moderator

Sonia Nassery Cole

Director, Writer, and Producer

Sonia Nassery Cole, Writer, Director, Producer and Humanitarian, is a trailblazer in every sense of the word. As a refugee, she fled from war-torn Afghanistan to the United States without her family at the age of fifteen. Cole made it her life’s mission to help others through telling stories. The medium she chose was film.

Cole’s film “Black Tulip”, filmed in war zone Afghanistan, was the official Oscar submission for Afghanistan and garnered numerous international accolades winning over eleven film festival awards.

Her newest independent feature film “I AM YOU”, was the official submission from Afghanistan for the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards. Based on a true story, the film takes you on a perilous migration to freedom and hope through the eyes of three refugees. From their perspective, you witness their will to survive, and the dramatic conditions they endure on their journeys. The film has received nine awards from international film festivals.

In 2002, she founded the Afghanistan World Foundation, which seeks to improve education, health care, and development in that country and to enhance social opportunities for Afghan women and children.

She is the recipient of the following awards: “Congressional Recognition”, “Afghan American Sisterhood”, “United Nations Women Together”, “Freedom To Write” Pen Center. Cole is the best selling author of “Will I Live Tomorrow” and Director, Producer, Writer of “The Breadwinner” and “The Black Tulip” and “I AM YOU”.