Her filmmaking career began with the Scottish Documentary Institute (SDI) in 2008, where she developed and produced several shorts and feature docs and worked on innovative impact and audience engagement campaigns. She was drawn to the challenging and emotive subject matter and became curious about what psychological support could look like for documentary teams and participants.

Training as a person-centred therapist was a life-changing journey. She learnt to prioritise her own mental health so that she could offer the strength and support that her clients needed. It quickly became clear that the tools she was given as a therapist could be invaluable resources for the documentary community and so Film In Mind was born.

Since establishing Film In Mind, she has seen many filmmaking clients for personal therapy, she has developed a model of supervision to support filmmakers professional work, she has spoken at dozens of film festivals and during film labs on the issue of mental health in filmmaking, developed several training initiatives for filmmakers around this issue and launched a research project called DocuMentality with her partners, Malikkah Rollins & the D-Word.

When working with clients, either through training, individual therapy or consultation, she draws on her insight from both industries to create a safe and open environment that enables us to look at new ways of working – one that accepts the vulnerable spaces we find ourselves in.

She lives with her partner and two young children in the Lake District, in the north of England, UK.

Helena was drawn to Film In Mind to fuse her training as an Art Therapist with her years of experience as a Documentary Producer in the UK TV industry, namely for the BBC, Channel4, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Discovery+, Amazon and Netflix.

She understands the pressures, challenges and rewards of working in the Film and TV industry from the bottom up. She is driven to improve experiences of filmmaking by applying and promoting therapeutic techniques and structures on both sides of the camera. 

In her therapeutic practice, Helena is working as an Art Therapist Trainee (under UKPC and HCPC accreditation) for the NHS and London-based mental health charities, running one-to-one and group therapy sessions. She facilitates seven art forms integrated with talking therapy shaped by psychodynamic and attachment theory, neuroscience, gestalt, transactional analysis, and trauma-informed training, among others. Her relational ability and interest in human stories has been honed by counselling qualifications as well as filmmaking. 

Helena is a juggling act of her therapeutic practice, ongoing producing career and contribution to Film In Mind.

Clair brings a range of talents to Film in Mind because of her multi-disciplinary background and takes the lead on projects around research and evaluation as well as business development.

Drawing on skills in qualitative data analysis, she authored the 2022 DocuMentality report, The Price of Passion, and the 2024 Peace is Loud report, Real People, Real Stories.

Her dual filmmaking and research career began in 2018, after completing graduate degrees in International Relations and Anthropology. As a researcher and filmmaker, Clair is driven by curiosity about the intersections of people, culture, creativity, and power. She is passionate about creative non-fiction in all its forms including films, podcasts, essays, and VR. She places particular emphasis on ethical emancipatory partnerships and using creative methods within frameworks of participatory action research and co-creation. Her films to date investigate themes of race, mental health, and healing.

In 2022, Clair completed training with Film in Mind on Peer Support Group facilitation. She was captivated by the experience and in 2023, began her training in psychotherapy.

Clair also loves to write, sketch, hike, and make up stilly songs to entertain her friends.

Coming from a family of therapists, it was a matter of time until she became a therapist in her own right. As a Relationship therapist (TRA®), her focus is on helping people identify their needs and fears, accept and love who they are, and see their responsibility (response-ability) so they can have more satisfying relationships: with family, partnerships, work, friends, etc. 

Working with the film industry to support team members by offering a space to be heard and deeply understood is fundamental to Marina’s practice. She is fluent in English, French and Spanish and is the daughter of immigrants from Argentina and Guyana which has informed her worldview and her own ability to hold multiple identities at once.

Serra’s studies and work experience in psychotherapy, politics, arts and culture, and history have focused on forms of belonging and opposition; individual, intergenerational and collective trauma; feminism and ecology; experiences of displacement, and forms of care, solidarity and resilience.

In her former life in Istanbul, Serra co-founded and acted for 18 years as director of !f Istanbul Film Festival, an interdisciplinary arts event, a community of support for alternative filmmakers, and a platform for free expression and diversity in Turkey. Serra is also a co-founder of Turkey’s first independent film fund for documentaries, the New Film Fund. Like many others in Turkey, both spaces have been hard hit by ruptures and political oppression which eventually led to her exile.

Today, in her individual therapy sessions and in group facilitation practice,  she sees her work as a trauma-informed, process-oriented extension of her experience in the cultural field. She accompanies her clients to create a safe space for all the voices within to emerge, and to trust in the intelligence of all the processes behind the most intimate dynamics that are alive, even if they are difficult and ridden with conflict.  

Her work aims to help foster awareness, care, courageous communication, solidarity and resilience in our very own personal ecosystems, teams, and industry.

Yodit is motivated by change and witnessing people undergo true transformation when they journey through therapy. She takes pride in helping clients overcome their greatest challenges and understanding themselves better. 

As a trauma specialist, she is particularly interested by the overall connection between the body and mind. She works with a range of clients who may not be so confident to identify and express buried feelings around relationships, identity, lack of self-worth, abandonment, rejection, grief, addiction, anxiety and much more.

She hopes to create a non-judgemental, empathic and nurturing environment, in which there can be space for a complete range of emotions. She aims to help clients to have a better relationship with themselves and leave with a great sense of empowerment.

For 10 years, she was a trained psychotherapist specializing in supporting young adults experiencing mental health challenges. In her full-time life, she is the Director of Industry and Education at DOC NYC, the largest doc film festival in the United States. She is a member of Brown Girl Doc Mafia, on the board of Women in Film and Video-DC and was an independent doc producer for 6 years.

When she’s not busy watching films, Malikkah likes to plot her next international travel adventure and make homemade ice cream.

Shaleece helps documentary filmmakers and other creatives work with something often overlooked: the wisdom their bodies hold.

Our bodies remember. They hold tensions we’ve stopped noticing, develop protective habits, and carry the imprint of our joys and hurts. When we’re in the thick of making films—managing team dynamics, trying to care for our participants and ourselves, or stretching the limits of a micro budget—old patterns show up. We might value setting boundaries but notice that we keep saying yes before we’ve really had time to consider. We might long for connection with our participants or production team but notice that we withdraw when conflict emerges. Awareness of these patterns often isn’t enough to change them.

Drawing on over a decade of practice and study, Shaleece offers a grounded, practice-based approach to noticing these patterns and to shifting them. The work isn’t about fixing what’s broken. It’s about clarifying what we really want, for ourselves and our communities, and then building the capacity to show up in ways that are aligned with those desires. We build new capacities through repetition, training our bodies and nervous systems to support who we want to be. 

As a documentary filmmaker herself for 15 years, Shaleece knows the particular pressures of this work. She also believes that how we show up in our personal lives and creative work is connected to the larger work of social change. 

Shaleece works in person in Los Angeles and remotely with people around the world. She also co-leads a free monthly somatics practice space. (Come by if you’re in LA!) Beyond her coaching work, she grows food, cooks for loved ones, and organizes with her fellow Angelinos. She’s part of a tight-knit intergenerational community of queer folks and neighbors practicing toward interdependence together.

Certifications & Selected Trainings:
Certified Somatic Practitioner – Strozzi Institute for Somatics
ACC Certified Coach – International Coaching Federation
Somatics, Trauma, and Resilience – Strozzi Institute for Somatics
The Politics of Trauma I & II – Staci Haines

Before entering the film industry, Helen spent 15 years working in the third sector with vulnerable and marginalised communities, including survivors of trafficking, people at risk of sexual exploitation, and individuals in recovery from addiction. This experience rooted her deeply in empathy, integrity, and respect for the uniqueness of every person’s story.

Her move into filmmaking began in 2018, when she and her partner launched their production company. Stepping into this new world was both inspiring and demanding, and it revealed to her how emotionally intense creative work can be. Collaborating with therapist and producer Rebecca Day, Helen went on to co-develop peer support training for filmmakers — combining her knowledge of personal development, mental health, and creative collaboration.

In 2021, she began formal training as a Person-Centred Psychotherapist — a natural step in her lifelong commitment to understanding and supporting others. Helen brings warmth, presence, and a grounded understanding of life’s complexity into her work.

Her approach is collaborative, curious, and relational. She offers a welcoming space where people can feel seen, heard, and understood — drawing on creativity, mindfulness, and compassion to support filmmakers and creatives in reconnecting with themselves and their purpose.

Leah offers filmmaker and film team accountability and impact consultations at Film in Mind led by your needs. These may include facilitated sessions with her network of experts across academia, journalism and activism, workshopping specific ethical and safety concerns with you, or helping to determine and address knowledge gaps. She can develop an accountability plan with progress checkpoints; co-create written agreements for collaborators; assist with crafting impact strategy; navigate grant application text; and/or brainstorm partnerships and engagement options to support the film’s goals and ensure its successful launch. 

As Associate Director at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival for 11 years Leah led efforts to embed accessible, inclusive and trauma-informed practices – from programming / curation to event production – while building on her relationships in the international film, human rights and journalism worlds. The intersection of ethics, accountability, impact and care has guided Leah’s many roles and collaborations over the years, in which she has strived to center the dignity and authority of those most marginalized and co-build deep and meaningful impact, while honoring creative storytelling. Previous roles include work with institutions such as POV, Tribeca Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Film Institute, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Catapult Film Fund, Rooftop Films and Arts Engine.