Team

We are always hungry for new, motivated talent who have a passion for media and changing the world.  If you are interested in joining the team, please contact chrs@beyondblueproductions.com

CORE TEAM

Sultan Sharrief | Creative Director | sultan@beyondblueproductions.com

Sultan Sharrief’s 2009 directorial debut feature, Bilal’s Stand, “heralds the arrival of its filmmaker as a new voice in American independent cinema.”—Filmmaker Magazine.

After screening Bilal’s Stand at top film festivals around the country, including at the Sundance Film Festival, MOMA New Directors, New Films, and the Seattle Film Festival, Sharrief was recently selected as one of the Top 25 New Faces in Independent Film. He seeks to develop socially relevant content while empowering others through the process of filmmaking. Beginning at the young age of 19, he produced The Spiral Project, a 35mm feature film nominated for an MTV Movie Award. Sharrief is currently developing another feature film that tackles current social issues, The Bottom Line, with an accompanying reality series to shoot in the summer of 2011.

Sharrief maintains a strong commitment to his educational values. He attended the University of Michigan on partial academic scholarship and graduated in 2006 with a degree in Film & Video studies. In 2007 Sharrief was awarded a fellowship with the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan for his work with low-income, at-risk high school students in Detroit’s underserved communities. The program Sharrief directed and created was recognized for its capacity to serve as a national model for using arts education as a pipeline to higher education for at-risk youth. Today, Sharrief is an artist-in-residence at the University of Michigan. Sharrief’s model education program is called EFEX (Education through the Filmmaking EXperience).

Chris Blauvelt | Executive Producer | chris@beyondblueproductions.com

Chris Blauvelt is a social entrepreneur passionate about education and youth development.  He graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he studied engineering and developed strong and insightful problem solving skills, along with a solid background in business through his fellowship with the Tauber Institute for Global Operations.  He also received the Outstanding Student Leader of the Year Award as a senior and was invited to McKinsey’s Summer Leadership Summit.  Despite amassing an impressive engineering resume, he had a change of heart after graduation and pursued his  true passion – education – receiving his masters from Michigan in Educational Studies & Leadership.

After teaching for a couple of years back in his home state of Massachusetts at Middlesex Academy, Chris became the Director of Finance & Operations for an educational non-profit, the Fawakih Institute, where he helped establish the Institute by exceeding fundraising goals for year by 100% and led to a 200% growth in revenue and student enrollment.  He joined Beyond Blue Productions in April 2010 to manage all business aspects of the company and help establish a strong foundation for the company to grow out from.

Chris has also received government scholarships to study Arabic in Morocco and Jordan, and sits on the Board of Trustees for the Summer Arabic Institute and the Arabic Institute Foundation, both based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  In his free time, Chris enjoys nature.

Micah Bartelme | Producer | micah@beyondblueproductions.com

Sung Hei Yau | Technical Wizard | sunny@beyondblueproductions.com