Steve James' affiliation with Kartemquin began in 1987 with the start of production of Hoop Dreams, for which he served as director, producer, and co-editor. He has since then become one of the most acclaimed documentary makers of his generation, with noted works being Stevie, The New Americans, The War Tapes, At the Death House Door, The Interrupters, Life Itself, and most recently the 2018 Academy Award®-nominated Abacus: Small Enough to Jail.

Zak is an Emmy and PGA award-winning documentary filmmaker who has made films for over 15 years. Currently, Zak is producing several feature films: Chicago Story (working title) with producer/director Steve James; Until the Lion Speaks (working title), for Concordia Studio, with co-directors Bing Liu and Joshua Altman; and Generation Food (working title), a film he is also co-directing/producing with Raj Patel and producer Rachel Wexler.

From 2008-2015, Justine led Kartemquin Films as Executive Director as well as being an Executive Producer on each new film. She was responsible, in concert with the Board of Directors, for creating and implementing the strategic vision for Kartemquin. Justine successfully transitioned to the ED role in a historic founder-led organization, and made major strides in building a foundation for long-term sustainability.

Artistic Director and founding member of Kartemquin Films, Gordon Quinn has been making documentaries for over 50 years. Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun Times, called his first film Home for Life (1966) "an extraordinarily moving documentary." With Home for Life Gordon established the direction he would take for the next four decades, making cinéma vérité films that investigate and critique society by documenting the unfolding lives of real people. 

Mark Mitten is an award-winning producer who has created a variety of media and entertainment projects. Most recently he originated and produced the internationally acclaimed documentary Abacus: Small Enough To Jail, directed by Steve James (Hoop Dreams), which premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. Abacus was nominated for the 2018 Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary and was named best Political Documentary by the Critic’s Choice Awards. Mark is producing the feature version of Abacus with Justin Lin (Fast and Furious) directing.

David E. Simpson is a highly-awarded filmmaker who brings to his projects a collaborative spirit, proven storytelling chops and formidable attention to detail. Films he has produced, directed or edited have garnered two Emmys, two DuPont-Columbia batons, a pair of Peabody awards, an Oscar nomination, a Sundance jury prize and best in category at countless festivals. He has worked in close association with Kartemquin Films since 1997.

Emily Hart is a director, producer and cinematographer with over two decades experience creating award-winning documentary films and television.  With Kartemquin Films, she produced Steve James’ No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson, which screened at festivals including SXSW, Full Frame, and iDOCS International Documentary Forum in Beijing; was broadcast as part of ESPN Films’ “30 for 30,” winner of the 2010 International Documentary Association Award for Best Continuing Series and a 2011 Peabody Award; and selected by the U.S.

Joshua Abrams has composed scores for 7 feature films, 6 short films, and the themes for StoryCorps Animated Shorts. His music has appeared in Oscar-nominated and Emmy award-winning films by directors Steve James and Bill Siegel, as well as films by Aaron Wickenden, Dan Rybicky, Jamie Meltzer, Dinesh Sabu, and Simon Starling. Joshua's score for Life Itself earned him a nomination for best score of 2015 from Cinema Eye Honors. Ray Pride of New City writes, "Abrams brings nuance and grace to the smallest human moments in his bristling marvel of a score for America to Me. Abrams watches the moment; he anticipates the future, the possibility of change, the possibility of tragedy, and so many grades of emotion. His score is stealth: patient, suggestive, eager to surprise.

A graduate of Columbia College Chicago, Ryan first joined the Kartemquin family as an intern of Xan Aranda and assisted in the rollout of her film Andrew Bird: Fever Year. Later, as an intern at Kartemquin, he worked on a range of tasks including contributing to outreach on The Interrupters, assisting in editing of the demo of Living Revolution, and helping with Kartemquin’s first KTQ Labs Spring Showcase.

Jackson James has worked as a director and cinematographer on over 55+ music videos primarily based in Chicago. He's worked closely with many of the rising musical acts from Chicago, including Ravyn Lenae, Chance the Rapper, Joey Purp, Twin Peaks, Knox Fortune, Towkio, and others, often featuring a wide variety of neighborhoods and settings around Chicago as the backdrop for each piece. Jackson has also worked with his father as a cinematographer for Life Itself and America to Me, as well as an additional camera for The Interrupters.

Suzanne, the Vice President of Finance & Operations at Kartemquin, is a non-profit finance, operations and accounting expert dedicated to building stronger non-profit organizations through better fiscal management and organizational efficiency. Suzanne has a decade of professional experience focused on strengthening the internal capacity of charitable organizations. She believes that navigating the financial challenges unique to non-profits requires a high level of financial accountability, transparency, and integrity. In her role at Kartemquin, Suzanne is responsible for all aspects of the organization’s financial management, general operations, human resources, compliance, information technology, legal affairs and risk management.

Tim Horsburgh is Kartemquin’s Director of Communications and Distribution. Since 2009, he has driven marketing, audience engagement, public relations, and social media for Kartemquin and all their films. In March 2014 he began overseeing Kartemquin's distribution strategy. He is also responsible for assessing and managing potential new Kartemquin documentary projects.

For over thirty-five years, Jim Morrissette has had extensive experience as both a professional videographer and teacher, supporting his conviction that sharing and access are instrumental to the vitality of the independent production community. Jim has been the director of photography on numerous productions including: the award winning PBS documentary A Still Small Voice dealing with spiritual thought and mystic understanding, five episodes of Bill Kurtis' New Explorers, two episodes of Discovering Women for WGBH Boston, and Shadow Over Tibet, a documentary featuring the Dalai Lama. He was the principal videographer on the highly acclaimed six hour Frontline documentary The Farmer's Wife, which aired twice nationally on PBS.

Hillary Bachelder is a former Kartemquin intern turned staff member now working as a freelance editor, producer, and director in Chicago. Hillary first began her Kartemquin staff life as a night shift assistant editor for the Emmy-award winning The Trials of Muhammad Ali. Hillary went on to become Post Production Manager and then Director of Production at Kartemquin, managing teams, collaborating with filmmakers, and ultimately earning credits on over a dozen recent Kartemquin projects.

Nora Gully is a curious and compassionate video editor who specializes in long-form documentary films. She values the opportunity to learn about people's lives and bring their stories to the screen. Nora was most recently an editor on How to Build a School in Haiti and Unity Dinners, additional editor on Finding Vivian Maier and post production supervisor for Almost There. She spent five years as Kartemquin Films’ Post Production Associate. Her first credit was on the Emmy-award-winning The Interrupters, first as assistant editor and subsequently as post-production supervisor. She shepherded its popular festival run, its theatrical release, and delivered multiple versions to national and international broadcasters, including PBS Frontline, BBC Storyville, CBC’s The Passionate Eye and Canal Plus.

Ian Robertson Kibbe is a freelance filmmaker, writer, producer and musician with over 10 years experience as a producer, director and editor. Ian was the engagement coordinator for the award-winning PBS documentary, The Calling, and its companion campaign, What’s Your Calling (The Kindling Group) and also the engagement coordinator for the Emmy nominated, designer cult hit, Typeface (Kartemquin Films). Ian is currently working on the upcoming Kartemquin documentaries, Raising Bertie and Unbroken Glass. Ian's work has appeared on PBS, CNN, G4, The Health Care Blog, Billboard Magazine and the Huffington Post.

Matt Lauterbach is a documentary filmmaker and editor, an educational media developer, and an advocate for accessible media. He crafts engaging non-fiction content for classrooms, museums, and the big screen.

Leslie Simmer is Kartemquin's Director of Editing as well as Senior Editor on staff.

Beckie is responsible for managing the professional development programs and outreach initiatives of the organization including Diverse Voices in Docs, KTQ Labs, the KTQ Internship program, and classroom, media advocacy, and production outreach initiatives. Additionally, she works to build successful strategies for providing producers with critical advice and support around audience engagement, social impact, and fundraising throughout the production and distribution process. Beckie has led strategy for over 10 social impact and audience engagement campaigns for award-winning documentaries.

Rachel Dickson is an independent documentary filmmaker based in Chicago. Before working in film, she worked as a print and radio journalist in Latin America. She is currently the Supervising Producer of The School Project, a series of short documentaries and webisodes about public education collaboratively produced by Kartemquin Films, Kindling Group, Media Process Group, Siskel/Jacobs Productions, and Free Spirit Media.

Bob Hercules is an independent filmmaker and co-owner of Media Process Group. His recent films include Bill T. Jones: A Good Man (American Masters 2011, Full Frame/Silverdocs/IDFA/DOXA, 2011), Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance (American Masters, 2012), Forgiving Dr. Mengele (Slamdance Special Jury Prize, 2006) and Senator Obama Goes to Africa (seen in over 100 countries in 2007-08). He is currently Executive Producer on The Schools Project.

A former commissioning editor for documentary, Cynthia helped transform the way global documentaries are seen on American television. She created DOCday on Sundance Channel in 2002, and shepherded over 150 international and U.S. co-productions for public media at ITVS. More recently, she helped launch Al Jazeera America Presents with series (including Kartemquin's Hard Earned which won a 2016 Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award) and documentaries (Albert Maysles' final work, In Transit, Leon Gast's Sporting Dreams, Barbara Kopple's Shelter, Jennifer Maytorena Taylor's Daisy and Max, Michelle Shephard and Patrick Reed's Guantanamo's Child, Marc Levin's Freeway: Crack in the System, the last two recently nominated for Emmys.)

Adam D. Singer began working with Kartemquin Films in 1989 spending 5 years on the critically acclaimed documentary Hoop Dreams and has continued his association with them for the past 19 years. He has worked on various productions, both nationally and internationally, as a producer, cameraman and sound recordist. With Kartemquin and director Steve James he produced No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson which had its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival and aired as part of ESPN Films' 2010 International Documentary Association award-winning series "30 for 30." The film was selected for the IDOCS International Documentary Forum in Beijing, and also played at the Cleveland, Full Frame, Dallas, Nashville and Atlanta film festivals, among others. In 2011, No Crossover was selected by the U.S. Department of State for the American Documentary Showcase.