Boards & Staff

Heather joined the Hot Docs team in November 2021. From 2013 to 2018, she was the head of CBC English Services where she led CBC's digital transformation to the number-one Canadian digital media company and launched CBC Gem. She also refocused the CBC's programming bringing critical and audience acclaim; she shifted the focus of documentary programming from in-house to independent POV documentaries; and CBC became the number-one podcaster during her tenure. Prior to CBC, Heather ran all non-curatorial/development operations at the AGO.

A Top 40 Under 40 winner, Heather was named Woman of the Year by Women in Communications and Technology (WCT) in 2017. She has been honoured with a Bonham Centre Award by the University of Toronto's Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies and in 2019 was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by Leaders to be Proud Of. 

Chris McDonald was appointed president of Hot Docs in 2014. Prior to that, he served as the organizations executive director since 1998. A native of Montreal, Chris holds a degree in Film Studies from McGill University. Prior to Hot Docs, for five years Chris was development director at the prestigious Canadian Film Centre for Advanced Film, TV and New Media Training, founded by director Norman Jewison. Before working at the CFC, Chris worked for two national environmental organizations. He serves on several industry advisory boards, and has served on panels and juries at leading festivals around the world.

Alex Rogalski is the Senior Canadian programmer for Hot Docs and has been working with the festival since 2010. His programming career has focused on documentary and Canadian cinema for festivals across the country including TIFF, Calgary International Film Festival, Human Rights Watch, Victoria Film Festival,Gimme Some Truth and others. He holds a Masters in Communication and Culture, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film and has written for publications including POV magazine.

Aisha Jamal started programming at small, community-based festivals. She has been working as Canadian Programmer at Hot Docs since 2016. In 2019 she worked as Programming Associate for Canadian and Nordic features at TIFF and for four years she was Head of Programming at the Syria Film Festival. She also teaches film theory and criticism while working on her own film projects.  
 

Heather Haynes is a Senior International Programmer at Hot Docs. She serves on numerous film juries and work in progress labs for festivals across Mexico, Central and South America and has 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 is creator of Culture Storm, was 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 and artist Dana Claxton and Jeneen Frei Njootli.
 

Ravi Srinivasan has been an International Associate Programmer for Hot Docs since 2017. Ravi also serves as an International Programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival, and he is the founder and Executive Director of the South Western International Film Festival.

Eileen Arandiga is a film programmer and curator who has a special interest in short film. Eileen has worked for a number of festivals including Hot Docs and TIFF, she was the Festival Director of the Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto for six years.  Eileen holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Australia. 

Samah Ali is a distributor and film programmer based in Toronto and New York City. A lover of documentaries and virtual reality, she programs for Academy Award qualifying festivals Hot Docs Film Festival, DOC NYC, and Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. She is also the founder of Sisterhood Media, a production and distribution company streaming films on their platform, Sisterhood Media TV. You can interact with her on Twitter @sistersamah.

Denae Peters is a programmer, impact producer and documentary impact consultant. In addition to serving as a Hot Docs mid-length programmer, she oversees the documentary field infrastructure portfolio at the Perspective Fund and is a founding board member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia (BGDM), an advocacy initiative representing 5000+ women and non-binary people of color working across the documentary field. Previously, she consulted on non-theatrical impact campaigns at Picture Motion and Film Sprout and spent 5 years at the Toronto International Film Festival, overseeing guest/filmmaker relations.

Vivian Belik is a documentary producer, programmer and arts administrator who has curated and juried works for regional film festivals across Canada including the Available Light Film Festival, National Screen Institute and Gimli Film Festival. She currently works at TIFF and is a graduate of Ryerson University’s Documentary Media Program.

Jesse Cumming is a curator, writer, editor, and researcher. He has worked with the Toronto International Film Festival, the Berlinale Forum, and Open City Documentary Festival, and has curated, co-curated, and presented programs with The Museum of Modern Art, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and Anthology Film Archives, among other venues. His writing has appeared in Cinema Scope, MUBI Notebook, Hyperallergic, and more. He is currently a Media Lecturer with Ryerson University’s Cairo Campus.