Jordan Gaches (Actor, NYC Indie Film Festival PR Consultant)
Jordan is an actor and PR Consultant for the festival. He studies with Bob Krakower’s studio (shout-out to Vance Barber) and has fun shooting shorts with local filmmakers. He’s a native Kansan and recent Oklahoma City University grad, and he could watch Todd Haynes’ and Jenji Kohan’s work all day. Clips of his work and contact info are on JordanGaches.com

Blanca Esconda Agustí (Acquisition Consultant, Script Doctor) 
Blanca graduated with a First Class Honours from Contemporary Media Practice at University of Westminster (UK). After attending several script development courses at the Script Factory with Lucy Scher, she started working as an intern script reader for production companies in the UK and the US. She was asked to give her opinion on genre for the book Stand-Out Shorts (Russell Evans, Focal Press, 2010). She has attended several seminars, among them the acclaimed "Story" by Robert Mckee. She works as a Feature Screenwriting teacher and Script Reader for Cineuropa. She has collaborated as an Acquisition Consultant and Script Reader for a Distribution Company in the USA - Outsider Pictures. She has worked as Jury for L'Alternativa Film Festival (Barcelona) and at The European Independent Film Festival (Paris). Blanca has her own script consultancy (www.decodingstories.com) since 2011 in which she reads and edits scripts for freelance writers and production companies across Spain, the UK and Latin America.

Sydney Sidner (Screenwriter, Filmmaker, Educator, Consultant)
Syd co-wrote a pilot (reboot) of CHARMED for CBS. Her other works include the feature GETTING BUDDHA BACK, and the TV Pilots: BECKETT, BLISS CITY, TIOGA LAKE, ROUGE and MERIDIAN HILLS, which she sold to the CW, and INDISPOSED a short, produced by Warner Bros. for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).
She has taught screenwriting and TV pilot writing at Columbia, spec writing for television at NYU, theater at The Dalton School and theater and screenwriting at Northwestern University’s National High School Institute (NHSI).
She went on to earn an MFA in screenwriting from Columbia Film School, where her first short film THE RITE was awarded ‘Best Film’ at the Columbia Film Festival and was selected as a finalist for best student film by The National Board of Review. Another short she directed, GRAVITY, was selected by both Slamdance and Williamstown Film Festivals. Her feature-length screenplay, ADELAIDE, was awarded a MacDowell Colony screenwriting residency.
Syd co-wrote the feature LOVE, ONCE AND ALWAYS that just aired on the Hallmark channel, and is currently writing the indie feature TOUGH LOVE which she plans to direct. She’s been asked to teach TV pilot writing at Stonybrook's newly minted TV writing MFA program in the fall of 2018.