The Entertainment Industry Professional Mentoring Alliance (EIPMA)
Bernard Weiser (Moderator) is a professional sound supervisor / editor / designer who has worked in Hollywood over the last 40 years. He has worked on over 150 feature and broadcast productions including Steven Spielberg’s SCHINDLER‘S LIST, THE HURT LOCKER, and recently TED LASSO and Micheal Mann’s FERRARI.
Bernard is President of the Entertainment Industry Professionals Mentoring Alliance and teaches Sound Design at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film & Television’s Graduate Program.
Susan Vaill, ACE, is an award-winning editor of both comedy and drama. Her signature style has helped define Abbott Elementary, Hacks, Quiz Lady, This Is Us and Grey’s Anatomy. After editing the debut season of Hacks, Susan won the 2022 ACE Eddie Award and HPA Award for best edited comedy, and she was nominated for an Emmy for editing Hacks as well.
During her 11-year span reign on Grey’s Anatomy, Susan went from being an assistant editor on the pilot episode (code-named ‘Surgeons’) to editing over seventy episodes and directing three. Susan has also edited the award-winning drama This Is Us and the critically acclaimed AMC dramedy Lodge 49.
In 2019 Susan created ‘Bumped Up: the Leadership Workshop for New Editors’, a recurring event co-sponsored by ACE and the Editors Guild. She co-founded the networking group CAFE (Calling All Female Editors) that now has almost 700 members. She was inducted into the society of American Cinema Editors in 2018 and elected to the ACE Board of Directors in 2023. You can also find Susan cutting fabric instead of film, playing pickleball, or pillaging a museum gift shop.
Chris Howland, CAS (Panelist) is a Production Sound Mixer, based in Los Angeles. A member of the Cinema Audio Society, IATSE Local 695 and the Television Academy, Chris specializes in scripted narrative episodic television and feature films. He has a passion for organizing educational and community events for the film sound community through the mentorship group, LA Sound Mixers which he founded in 2013.
Chris Reeves, M.P.S.E., A.T.A.S. (Panelist) is currently a supervising sound editor with NBC Universal Studios.
He has thirty years of experience in post-production sound, which has garnered him two Emmys and three Golden Reels among his awards.
As a member of the MPSE Board of Directors, for the past twenty years, he has worked to promote the importance of Sound and Sound Editing in television and film. He is currently serving as a Governor for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Chris started his television career on the ABC/Disney show “Dinosaurs” after a decade working on independent feature films. Since then he has worked on a diverse collection of shows ranging from “Alias” to “The X-Files”.