Alex Herz is an award-winning writer, director & editor based in Los Angeles. His films have screened at festivals including SXSW, Heartland, and Tallgrass. He first attended NFFTY in 2012, and is honored to be serving as a member of the Episodic Jury this year. Alex is the creator of the viral internet series My Girlfriend Turned Into a Worm, which garnered over 50 million views on Reels and TikTok in its first year of release. He is currently adapting the project into a feature film. Alex is also the producer/editor of R&R, an independent pilot that premiered at SXSW in 2025. The project is in development with Liston James Productions.

Frida Perez is a Dominican-American filmmaker based in LA. Frida began her career as an assistant at UTA in the Independent Film Department before moving to Seth Rogen’s production company Point Grey Pictures where she worked under senior executives across film and television. Frida co-created and currently writes and produces THE STUDIO on AppleTV+. Frida’s work on the pilot episode won the Emmy Best Writing for a Comedy Series and the show won Best Comedy Series in 2025. In 2019, she became a Sundance Ignite Fellow for her short film White Noise. Her second short film, Bottle Bomb, premiered at the Chicago Latino Film Festival. Her third short film, Detox, was selected as part of NALIP's Women in Film Incubator Program sponsored by Netflix. It premiered at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival in 2023. Frida also served as Executive Producer for the podcast Storytime with Seth Rogen which was listed on several year-end “best of” lists. Frida was nominated for Best Scriptwriting for the Ambie Awards for her work. Frida is originally from the Bronx and graduated from Brown University.

Lacey Leavitt Gray is a Seattle producer whose credits include adult swim's Three Busy Debras, Lynn Shelton's Outside In, Touchy Feely, and Laggies, Megan Griffiths' Year of the Fox, I’ll Show You Mine, Sadie, Lucky Them, and The Off Hours, Todd Rohal's The Catechism Cataclysm, and adult swim projects The Hunky Boys Go Ding-Dong and M.O.P.Z., and Colin Trevorrow's Safety Not Guaranteed. Lacey was a Sundance Creative Producing Lab fellow, has a Cinema Studies degree from the University of Washington, is a member of King County’s Film Advisory Board, and serves as Board President of Scarecrow Video.