Susan is the award-winning director of Striking a Chord (2010), a documentary about the power of music to heal the invisible wounds of war. Her film Making the Crooked Straight (2008) debuted on HBO in April 2010, was acquired for distribution by New Video and received the 2011 Christopher Award. Susan is co-producer of the multi-award-winning film A Sea Change (2009), the first feature-length documentary about ocean acidification, the evil twin of climate change.

Susan’s concern for and active involvement with preserving the environment dates back to her early adulthood. First, through her experiences in Alaska, living among the Inuit, and then extending into her filmmaking career, in the production of “Richard Nelson’s Alaska” for the PBS series Natural Heroes, then work on Jimi Rock’s Under the Sea Adventures, an animated project intended to encourage children to connect to the oceans through their computers. She now chairs the Ocean Council for Oceana, the world’s largest international ocean conservation organization.

"As a board member of Oceana and Chairwoman of the Ocean Council I’m deeply committed to the health and well being of our ocean. My position allows me the good fortune of having access to the most up-to-date and in-depth knowledge currently available on the state of our waters, both the good and the bad. When I first began working with Oceana, I co-produced the documentary A Sea Change on ocean acidification, which helped to educate people on the effects of carbon dioxide on our ocean. To celebrate the completion of this film, I designed a mermaid pin, which I wore to an Oceana event. During an interview I was asked about my pin. I responded that I needed to believe in the existence of the mermaid because of what she represents: Mystery and Hope.

I’ve carried this sense of mystery and hope within me, even in the face of mounting scientific studies which show that our ocean is in profound distress and that her fragile ecosystems are on the verge of collapse. There’s no denying these cold, hard facts. Yet many do. And many others are too busy with their complicated lives or overwhelmed by the controversial viewpoints to fully grasp the potential impact a dying ocean will have on all of us. This is why I turned to the familiarity of the mermaid  as a means to make the formidableness of science more accessible. Woven together, myth and science address both our conscious and subconscious mind.

The mermaid had once lost her connection to the seas, but with care, time to replenish, and an instinctual intelligence she’d found her way home again.  It’s my hope that this film will inspire a new group of ocean activists to do the same".