Dorinda Drake, Jon Kamen, Joseph Patel, Dave Sirulnick, Salamishah Tillet

Teaches at Museum of the City of New York - Public

About the Speakers: 

Dorinda Drake attended the historic Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969. She was 19 at the time. Dorinda went on to become a political consultant and to travel the world including one of her favorite places: Turks and Caicos.

Jon Kamen, Chairman and CEO of RadicalMedia, has created one of the world’s leading producers of premium content across all media platforms. With over 175 film and television credits to his name, Jon’s artistic vision has been the force behind many Oscar®, Emmy®, Grammy® Golden Globe and Peabody Award®-winning and nominated titles. Kamen’s recent producer credits include Summer of Soul, the filmed versions of Hamilton and American Utopia, American Portrait, Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, and History Channel’s mini-series, GRANT. Kamen is a recipient of a Grammy, the 2018 IFP Gotham Awards, Mayor Bloomberg’s “Made in NY” Award and the Smithsonian’s National Design Award. He currently serves as a Vice Chair of the board of trustees for Rhode Island School of Design, The Museum of the Moving Image, and Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation.  

Joseph Patel is an award-winning Producer, Director, and Writer on documentaries and short films. He recently produced the feature documentary, Summer of Soul (...Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised), directed by Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson, winner of both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for US Documentary at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Patel began his career as a music & culture journalist. He has produced and directed television and digital content for MTV News & Docs and Vice Media; and later served as Head of Creative Content at The Fader and Vevo.  

Dave Sirulnick is President of Entertainment at RadicalMedia and an award-winning producer. Sirulnick has served as creative executive producer on a wide range of RadicalMedia projects including: Summer of Soul; the filmed versions of Hamilton, American Utopia, and Oh, Hello; Hamilton’s America; GRANT; Bobby Kennedy for President; My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman; Lebron James More Than an Athlete; and PBS American Portrait. Prior to joining RadicalMedia, Sirulnick served as Executive Vice President of News, Docs & Production at MTV. During his 28-year tenure at MTV, Dave created and/or developed, and led some of the channel’s leading and longest-running television series. Dave also executive produced MTV’s annual Video Music Awards for sixteen years and two Super Bowl halftime shows. Additionally, Sirulnick helmed the creation of award-winning music documentaries for the network that featured the likes of superstars such as Miley Cyrus, Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Drake, Ed Sheeran, Nicki Minaj, and Demi Lovato.

Salamishah Tillet is the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing and the Director of Express Newark at Rutgers University-Newark. She is a contributing critic-at-large for the New York Times, and the author of Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination and the recent book, In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of An American Masterpiece. She is currently working on a book on the civil rights icon, Nina Simone for which she received the Whiting Foundation Creative Non-Fiction grant in 2020, and the cultural history of the Me Too movement for which she was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2021. She is the co-host and coproducer of "Because of Anita," a four-part podcast that explores the meaning of Anita Hill's testimony -- thirty years ago -- and its ongoing legacy today.