Sarah Springer, Journalist and Creative, on Empowering Others to Tell Their Stories

Sarah Springer is an Emmy-nominated producer, documentary filmmaker and creative. She was named one of the 28 most powerful Black people in media by Blavity and is the co-creator of STILL HERE, an immersive experience created in partnership with Al Jazeera Contrast that featured at Sundance this year. STILL HERE focuses on Black women and their triumph over generational trauma, mass incarceration, gentrification and abuse.

Sarah defines the mindset to embody when telling stories that look, act or feel different than one’s own. It is something she teaches at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where she tells her students that “our understanding of our role as storytellers needs to shift. The thinking in the past was that it was part of our identity to be able to tell the stories for those who were ‘voiceless.’ That is not what our role is. As storytellers, it is absolutely vital for us to understand that everyone has the ability to tell their own story; we’re just here to help them put the pieces together.”

In this new episode of our Long Story Short series, Sarah talks to us about implementing policy through storytelling, fighting for equity, and collaborating on valuable projects in the year 2020.

For more about the work Sarah discusses in her video, please visit these links:
• Dalia: Cambiando el Futuro [Nike]
• A Love Song for Latasha [Netflix]
• Advocates for Inclusion in Media

Video edit by Carly Angeloni.