William Nix is the Chairman of the Creative Projects Group, which operates as a creative incubator for the development and production of motion pictures, television programs, music, interactive videogames, live entertainment, multimedia installations and events. He also serves as Avalon Investment Banking Group's Senior Advisor for Media, Entertainment & Technology. Prior to his current ventures, he was Co-Chair of Baker Botts' Entertainment, Media and Sports Practice Group, Vice-President of Business Affairs for NBA Properties, and COO of the MPAA's Global Content Protection Group. He is a lifetime voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and a member of the Television Academy as well as the Producers Council of the Producers Guild of America. His work involves both traditional media and multiple content delivery platforms, technologies and genres. Having worked with both major studios and independents for several decades, including Jeff Skoll’s Participant Media, he and his colleagues develop and produce innovative new content for global audiences to experience, including curriculum, discussion guide and other educational materials to support the reach and understanding of these works.
In addition to being Producer for the Gibran biographical feature film, along with Producer Salma Hayek, he was Executive Producer of an animated feature film based on Kahlil Gibran's iconic work, The Prophet. The film was written and directed by Roger Allers (The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin). Among its ten award nominations were three 2015 Annie-Nominations and inclusion in the Oscars Animated Feature Film Nomination short-list. It was a Special Selection at the Cannes Film Festival and winner of The WIFTS Foundation International Visionary Awards. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. He is also the Executive Producer of a multi-city art North American art exhibition tour of Gibran's collected works and an accompanying art book, which is slated to be curated and released by the prestigious Skira Rizzoli publishing house, and a Gibran biographical play, entitled Rest Upon the Wind, that showcased in New York, at the NYU/Skirball Theatre.
Will was the Executive Producer of Firedancer, a dramatic feature film about the Afghan Diaspora in the U.S. It was the first Afghan feature film to be submitted for Oscar consideration. The film had its world premiere in Kabul and its U.S. premiere at the Tribecca Film Festival in New York. He served in the same capacity on the companion documentary, Return to Afghanistan, which premiered at the U.N. Film Festival in New York. He was also Executive Producer for the Spanish-language documentary feature, !Ya Basta!, about the abduction phenomenon in Mexico, which premiered at SXSW.
He is the Executive Producer of three documentary features, Power, about the need for over 1 billion people to gain access to global and local energy systems, an entertaining historical overview entitled, This is Ragtime: The Birth of American Music and a series of oral-histories of Broadway (see: www.thebroadwayseries.com). He is also Producer of an animated feature film that is part of expanding the world-famous Daytona International Speedway and International Speedway Corporation family of brands into a character-based animated entertainment franchise that will be distributed to a worldwide audience (www.worldcentermedia.com).
For further biographical background and other information, please see: www.creativeprojectsgroup.com and www.pro.imdb.com/name/nm2773807
Grace Shalhoub is an independent filmmaker currently developing, writing, and producing feature-length motion pictures with cross-cultural themes. With a mission to create art that bridges cultural divides between East and West, Grace brings a wealth of diversity and social responsibility to the cinematic medium.
Grace wrote the biographical narrative feature film about famed Lebanese-American poet, artist and philosopher, Gibran Kahlil Gibran. Grace developed the story with her brother, Rob Shalhoub, and recently partnered with independent producer, William Nix, on the production of the feature motion picture based on their script. Gibran was a quarter-finalist at the AMPAS Nicholl Fellowship for Screenwriting in 2011, and was an official selection at the European Independent Film Festival in Paris, the Toronto International Film and Video Awards, the Female Eye Film Festival in Toronto, and SoCal Film Fest in Los Angeles.
Prior to filmmaking, Grace was the Director of Branding for Aregon, a leading regional e-business solutions provider and digital marketplace in the Middle East, where she was responsible for corporate brand identity and strategy.
Grace has a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences from Boston College and a Doctorate of Law from New England School of Law. Raised in Boston, Massachusetts, Grace now lives in Beirut, Lebanon. Grace is an avid traveler and photographer with a passion for capturing the faces and landscapes of post-war Lebanon.
Rob Shalhoub is an independent producer and screenwriter currently writing, developing, and producing independent films, television shows, and premium content for new media audiences. Rob is currently represented by Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and has a first-look producing deal at Sony Television.
Through a writing collaboration with his sister, Grace Shalhoub, Rob recently developed the biographical narrative feature film about famed Lebanese-American poet, artist and philosopher, Gibran Kahlil Gibran, and partnered with independent Producer, William Nix, on the production. "Gibran" was a quarter-finalist at the AMPAS Nicholl Fellowship for Screenwriting in 2011 and was an official selection at the European Independent Film Festival in Paris, the Toronto International Film and Video Awards, and the Female Eye Film Festival.
Since 2009, Rob has incubated more than a dozen film, television, and digital shows at Trend Media, the boutique studio he founded. Rob works closely with screenwriters taking an active role in the creative development of each film and show. Rob is currently attached as Executive Producer on several shows in development, many at the studio-level, including "Homeland Insecurity", a multi-camera comedy that Rob developed in partnership with Sony Television and sold to CBS Networks in 2010.
With nearly a decade in the industry, Rob maintains close relationships with top-level executives at major studios, television networks, independent production companies, digital channels, and talent agencies. Prior to entertainment, Mr. Shalhoub worked as a brand strategist at Sapient Corporation, an S&P 500 business and technology consultancy. With an undergraduate degree in International Relations from Tufts University, Rob also studied film production, screenwriting, and film theory.
Rob was raised in Boston, Massachusetts, and now enjoys the year-round sunshine of Los Angeles with his wife, Leila, and their three sons – Rami, Dany, and Jude.
Jean Gibran, a teacher, researched and co-authored the intimate biography entitled Kahlil Gibran: Beyond Borders ( www.amazon.com/Kahlil-Gibran-Beyond-Borders-Jean/dp/1566560934) with her late husband, the artist Kahlil G. Gibran, described as the "definitive biography of Kahlil Gibran," tracing the phenomenon of a first-generation immigrant succeeding in twentieth-century American Arts and Letters." Her husband, cousin to the elder Gibran and his namesake, was a distinguished Boston sculptor who, "over a thirty-year period...was entrusted with a formidable body of manuscripts, letters, drawings and memorabilia" of the poet and artist. For further information on this biographical collaboration with her late husband as well as information on his artworks, please see: http://www.kahlilgibran.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahlil_Gibran_(sculptor) and Love Made Visible
She is working closely with the screenwriters and Producer as Story Consultant to the production. She is also serving as consulting advisor in matters related to the art works of the elder Kahlil Gibran. Jean lives in Boston, a few blocks from Tyler Street where the author's family lived and close to Our Lady of the Cedars, the Maronite Catholic Church they attended, as well as the Quincy School where the elder Gibran's teachers first recognized his many talents.
She continues to contribute to several educational journals. Jean is a Golden Apple Teacher and Business Week Awardee for Innovative Teaching, a former Secretary of the Boston Women's Heritage Trail. She also co-authored the third edition of that organization's Guidebook.
Our beloved advisor, internationally acclaimed author and media critic, Dr. Jack G. Shaheen, passed in July 2017 (www.nytimes.com). He was a Pittsburgh native, a committed internationalist and a devoted humanist. Dr. Shaheen, a CBS News Consultant on Middle East Affairs from 1993-98, also served as a professional film consultant. He served as a consultant with the award-winning documentary, Umm Kulthum: A Voice of Egypt (1996), and also worked with writers and producers of feature films such as Writer-Director Steve Gaghan on Syriana (2005); and Producer Chuck Roven on Three Kings (1999). He guided us with his insights on our own Screenplay for Gibran as we worked to refine and craft it.
Dr Shaheen was a recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor (2013) which pays homage to those individuals who have distinguished themselves in the cultural mosaic of America. He delivered over 1,000 lectures in nearly of all the fifty states and on three continents. Among those universities that welcomed him are Oxford, Amherst, Emory, Harvard, the University of Southern California, West Point, as well as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the White House Truman Center. World capitols where he spoke include: London, Berlin, Paris, Prague, New Delhi, and Cairo. He consulted with the United Nations, the Los Angeles Commission on Human Relations, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, and New York City's Commission on Civil Rights. In cooperation with the U.S. Government, he also conducted seminars throughout the Middle East. Dr. Shaheen and his wife, Bernice, created the Endowed Media Scholarship Fund (see: www.accesscommunity.org ) as part of the Center for Arab American Philanthropy to support Arab American university students majoring in mass communications, journalism and film. His lectures and writings illustrate that damaging racial and ethnic stereotypes of Asians, blacks, Native Americans and others injure innocent people. He defined crude caricatures, explained why they persist, and provided workable solutions to help shatter misconceptions.
Shaheen's seminal work, Reel Bad Arabs, was edited and updated in 2009, and his telling book, A is for Arab: Archiving Stereotypes in U.S. Popular Culture, features photographs of objects and materials from the Jack G. Shaheen Archive at New York University (NYU). The book and a special traveling exhibit documents U.S. popular culture representations of Arabs and Muslims from the early-20th century to the present. NYU's Shaheen Archive contains more than 4,000 images including motion pictures, cartoons, and TV programs, as well as toys and games featuring anti-Arab and anti-Muslim depictions. His other books are: Nuclear War Films, The TV Arab, Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture, the award-winning book [and DVD] Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, and GUILTY Hollywood's Verdict on Arabs after 9/11. His writings include 300-plus essays in publications such as Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, to dozens of chapters on stereotypes in numerous college textbooks.
Dr. Shaheen, an Oxford Research Scholar, was the recipient of two Fulbright teaching awards; he held degrees from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Missouri. He appeared on national network programs such as CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio, Nightline, Good Morning America, 48 Hours, and The Today Show.
Among Dr. Shaheen's awards recognizing his "outstanding contribution towards a better understanding of our global community" were: The University of Pennsylvania's Janet Lee Stevens Award; the American Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee's Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of "his lifelong commitment to bring a better understanding towards peace for all mankind;" and the Pancho Be Award for "the advancement of humanity." Pancho Be, a Mayan phrase, means to seek the root of truth.
Dr. Scott Field, who passed in September 2014 as a result of a hiking accident in the French Alps, was a steadfast advocate for the unity views of Kahlil Gibran and an active production advisor to the Gibran biographical feature film. He was an expert in international affairs and the Middle East. He worked and traveled widely in the region since the early 1990s. He has been a conference speaker and otherwise involved with the Skoll Foundation and the Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Dr. Field served as the Middle East Manager at the Skoll Global Threats Fund, where he led the development of philanthropic initiatives aimed at mitigating conflict in the region, particularly in Israel-Palestine and Syria. In this capacity he has also acted as an advisor to Participant Media on the films State 194 and The Square. At the time of his passing, he was serving as the Political Officer at the United Nations Office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary General for Syria.
Previously, Scott had been a lecturer and briefer in International Relations and Middle East politics for the U.S. Department of Defense at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, and a World Peace Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He maintained an affiliation as a Visiting Scholar at U.C. Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies and has written numerous articles on current issues in Middle East politics for Al Jazeera, The Daily Beast and Al Monitor. He was also a champion footballer, who left the sport to pursue his academic and political studies.
Scott had a longstanding personal connection with Kahlil Gibran’s hometown of Becharré, and the nearby Cedars of God, where he celebrated his ceremony of marriage, and which he first visited in 1995.
