Richard Lewis has worked as a writer, producer, director, and/or editor for companies including National Geographic Television, Channel 4 (UK), A&E, PBS, Endgame Entertainment, Broken Road Productions, Sierra Club Productions, and Devillier-Donegan Enterprises. Richard’s screenplay, Bleeding Hearts, won the award for Best Pilot Script at the 2022 Conference of the University Film and Video Association. His feature script, Valley of Bones, was commissioned and produced by North Dakota-based Zephyr Productions on a $2.2 million budget. The film opened on 300+ screens in September 2017. A feature script, Acceleration, is presently under a third option to Endgame Entertainment, and another, Shrank, was recently under option to LA-based Shrink Wrap Productions. Richard also wrote the treatment for and worked as a creative consultant on The Living Weapon, an episode of American Experience for PBS which won an Emmy for research. Chimp Rescue, one of his documentaries for National Geographic Television, won a Genesis Award as the year’s Best US Cable Documentary. Richard’s editing credits include Nick Broomfield's Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, which premiered at Sundance. Additional experience includes two years as a story analyst in Los Angeles and three years as a management consultant with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in Atlanta and London. He is originally from Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Ben Bays grew up in Texas, studied illustration, worked as an animator, then video game artist, now educator.  He joined the faculty of the Department of Radio Television Film in 2008 and is involved in education at the departmental, college, institutional, regional and international level.   His current area of research is cultural spaces around comics and cartoons, but his areas of instruction are in the digital arts and entertainment.

Korey Pereira earned a B.S. in Radio-Television-Film from the University of Texas at Austin. Since graduating, he has remained involved with the department by mixing end-of-semester student films and in 2018 joined the faculty as a Lecturer. In 2023 he accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Practice and Audio Area Head. He has also guest lectured at Texas State University, East Tennessee State University, Syracuse University, and a number of courses at the University of Texas.

Korey is the founder of Soularity Sound, a post-production sound company based
in Austin, Texas. He also works with Soundcrafter and a number of other Austin and LA-
based crews as a Dialogue Editor, Foley Mixer or Supervising Sound Editor. In 2020, he
upgraded his studio to support Dolby Atmos mixing and has expanded into 360 spatial
audio for VR and Atmos mixing for video games. He started the now recurring Tech
Corner column for Wavelength (the MPSE quarterly magazine) and regularly
contributes to ProSoundEffects.com and Production Expert.

Korey is an active member of the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences and in
2021 he was elected to the Motion Picture Sound Editors' Board of Directors. In 2022,
Korey was awarded a Primetime Emmy for his sound editing work on Stranger Things
Season 4. In 2023, Korey was nominated for a Golden Reel for his work on Stranger
Things and won for his work on Prey, and was also nominated again for his work on
Stranger Things. Other credits include films from both Richard Linklater and Robert
Rodriguez, as well as television series such as Shipping Wars, Law & Order, My 600-lb
Life, and Fixer Upper: Welcome Home. A full list of credits can be found on IMDB.
When not working, Korey enjoys traveling the world with his wife and recording new
sounds along the way.

Kumar Mayank completed his engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi and worked a few corporate jobs before getting into filmmaking. Since then he has assisted on and off in TV commercials, feature length films and has worked as a freelancer in Mumbai.

He is currently pursuing a Master's degree in filmmaking from UT Austin.

A television producer and screenwriter, Maya Perez was most recently a co-producer on a romantic drama series starring Joshua Jackson and Lauren Ridloff and produced by Ava DuVernay for Starz. Prior to that, she was an executive story editor on Showtime’s American Rust S2 and an executive producer on the unscripted interview series Austin Film Festival’s On Story on PBS for eleven seasons. Nominated for two Lone Star EMMY Awards®, On Story won a Lone Star EMMY Award® for Best Interview/Discussion Program Series in 2018 and for Best Arts/Entertainment Program in 2014. Maya’s feature screenplays have been optioned for production and recognized by fellowships from SFFILM/Westridge, Sundance Institute, and NY Stage & Film.

Maya's short stories and essays have been published in Texas Monthly, American Short Fiction, Joyland, Electric Lit, and more. In addition, she co-edited three collections of interviews with filmmakers published by the University of Texas Press: On Story — Screenwriters and Their Craft (2013), On Story — Screenwriters and Filmmakers on Their Iconic Films (2016), and On Story — The Golden Ages of Television (October 2018).

Maya received her BA from Vassar College and her MFA in Screenwriting as a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers. She grew up in Kenya, Zambia, and the United States and now lives in Austin, Texas, where she teaches screenwriting and is the Area Head for Screenwriting at The University of Texas at Austin.