Stonewall

StoryBolt Facilitator

Anna is currently a senior Diversity, Equity and Inclusion leader at Lowenstein Sandler, LLP in New York. In 2020, she launched Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for BetMGM and headed the vertical for almost 4 years. Prior to that, she inaugurated and ran DEI programming for a global marketing agency on the West Coast for five years. 

Anna is a lifetime learner who is energized when she can facilitate a seat at the table for everyone. With exceptional interpersonal skills and the ability to develop and manage authentic relationships across a diverse spectrum of stakeholders, she has a respected reputation for being a straight-shooting, empathetic communicator who has the ability to build trust across organizations.

Anna received her Master’s degree in Middle Eastern and North African Studies from The Graduate Center at City University New York, where her thesis focused on women's movements in Iran, and her bachelor’s degree in social sciences with a concentration in ethnicity, gender and culture from the University of Washington. With the diverse backdrop of these programs, she is able to better recognize the breadth of cultural, historical and political viewpoints, and tap into it with her work. 

Filmmaker

Cheryl Furjanic is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker whose documentary and fiction films have screened at 150+ festivals worldwide and on television. Her most recent film is The New York Times Op-Doc Stonewall: The Making of a Monument (2019). Her feature documentary, Back on Board: Greg Louganis was broadcast on HBO and nominated for an Emmy Award and Producers Guild of America award in 2016. The film also gained critical and audience acclaim on the film festival circuit, screening at over 40 festivals worldwide and picking up eight awards. Back on Board was selected for the American Film Showcase, a program of the U.S. State Department that brings award-winning contemporary American documentaries around the world offering a view of American society and culture as seen by independent filmmakers. In 2014 she was named to the OUT100—Out Magazine’s list of the most compelling LGBTQ people of the year. Her feature documentary, Sync or Swim (2008), premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival. It went on to screen at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight and other festivals and received numerous awards including a Billie Award for Journalism from the Women’s Sports Foundation. Her early short films include A Good Uplift (2003) a documentary about a Lower East Side corset shop and the LGBT film festival hit Bar Talk (2002) a comedy fiction film about women in bars who are too cool to talk to each other. Though she has worked in many different filmmaking genres, there is a through-line in all of her work of heart, humor, and hope in the face of uncertainty.

Furjanic has been teaching documentary production at New York University in the Culture & Media Program for two decades. She has done freelance writing and consulting for NBC Universal, Comcast/Xfinity, and other media companies. Furjanic consults regularly for filmmakers on documentary development/production, crowdfunding, and social media campaigns. She is a proud member of the board of the Making Gay History podcast. She holds a BFA in Film & Television production from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a Masters from NYU/Tisch’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).

Many moons ago, she was a member of two NYC queer comedy performance troupes: Neon Tina (arguably the most well-documented, least well-known downtown queer performance troupe in NYC) and The Lesbian Overtones (an all-lesbian a cappella group, bringing Lesbian standards back to the masses…in four-part harmony). She has appeared at the New York International Fringe Festival and many other now-closed downtown NYC performance venues. She is a closet juggler and an award-winning Halloween costume maker and her go-to Karaoke genres are showtunes and Cher. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and son.