Boards & Staff

Sylvia D. Hamilton is an award-winning Nova Scotian filmmaker and writer known for the documentaries Portia White: Think on Me, The Little Black School House and Black Mother Black Daughter, among others. She is the author of the poetry collection And I Alone Escaped to Tell You, a finalist for the Nova Scotia Masterworks Award and the 2015 League of Canadian Poets Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her new collection titled Tender was released in October 2022. Hamilton’s multi-media installations have shown at the Royal Ontario Museum, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Dalhousie Art Gallery, among other venues. She received the 2019 Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media and the 2021 Luminary Award given by the Documentary Organization of Canada’s Doc Institute. For many years she taught documentary survey and production courses in the Journalism School of the University of King’s College in Halifax where she is now an Inglis Professor Emeritus.

Andrew is CEO and Managing Partner of Altas Partners (www.altas.com), a North American private equity firm that manages US$10+ billion on behalf of global institutional investors. Andrew founded Altas in 2012 following a 17-year career with Onex Corporation where, as a Managing Director, he co-led the establishment of Onex Partners (Onex’ large cap private equity platform) and oversaw its other investing platforms. Prior to joining Onex in 1995, Andrew worked at McKinsey & Company and a private family business.

Andrew holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree (Gold Medalist) from McGill University and an MBA from Harvard University. Andrew is or has served as a Board member of The York School, The Hospital for Sick Children, Hot Docs, Urban Squash Toronto and Harvard Business School’s Canadian Advisory Board.

Marie Nelson is a media veteran with decades of experience in independent documentary film, news, and broadcasting. She's held senior positions at American networks, including most recently as Senior Vice President at ABC News/Disney where she led a brand and content strategy that pioneered and developed inclusive and diverse-led content for television, streaming and film audiences. In addition to her extensive media experience, Ms. Nelson has served with government, non-profit and development organizations, including serving in two U.S. presidential administrations. She holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the Harvard Kennedy School and a B.A. in Political Science and Women’s Studies from Duke University. Her work has been recognized by Emmy, Peabody, Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and NAACP Image awards.

Heather Haynes has been with Hot Docs for close to 17 years. A  former Senior International Programmer she now holds the position of Associate Director for Festival Programming. She serves on numerous film juries and work in progress labs for International festivals including Mexico, Central and South America and served, for several years, as a reader for Chicken & Egg’s (egg)celerator labs. She was an International Programmer for fiction and documentary at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Festival, guest programmer for AluCine and has co-written and produced three award-winning documentaries. In addition to her film work, Heather was creator of Culture Storm, co-founding collective member and producer of Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto, founder and artistic director of Toronto Free Gallery and Publisher of Fuse Magazine. She is currently in production on a feature film with director/artist Dana Claxton and Jeneen Frei Njootli.