Academy’s Board Continues Its Makeover With 11 First-Time Governors
Actor Lou Diamond Phillips, documentary filmmaker Simon Kilmurry and writer Dana Stevens are among the 11 film professionals who have been elected to the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy announced on Thursday.
Those new governors are part of a wholesale makeover of the AMPAS board prompted by new term limits imposed last year. In 10 of the 11 branches where first-time governors were elected, the incumbent governors were unable to run again because of those new limits, which restrict governors to two consecutive three-year terms. Last year, when those limits were instituted, 10 governors were termed off the board and 12 first-time governors were elected.
This year’s election means that 23 of the 55 members of the board will be in their first or second term.
In the Academy’s 18 branches, all six incumbent governors who were eligible to run again were re-elected. Those are Debra Zane (Casting Directors Branch), Ava DuVernay (Directors Branch), Steven Rivkin (Film Editors Branch), Linda Flowers (Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Branch), Lynette Howell Taylor (Producers Branch) and Rob Bredow (Visual Effects Branch).
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Aside from Phillips, Kilmurry and Stevens, governors who have been elected for the first time are Daniel Orlandi (Costume Designers), Hannah Minghella (Executives), David I. Dinerstein (Marketing and Public Relations), Richard Gibbs (Music), Kalina Ivanov (Production Design), Jinko Gotoh (Short Films and Feature Animation) and Mark P. Stoeckinger (Sound).
Cinematographer Ellen Kuras was returned to the board after a hiatus. Wendy Aylsworth was elected as the first-ever governor for the new Production and Technology Branch.
For the 2023-2024 term, the board will consist of 26 men and 29 women, with 14 belonging to an underrepresented racial or ethnic group. The number of women is two shy of the record 31 on the 2021-2022 board.
Governors who had to leave the board because of term limits were actor Whoopi Goldberg, cinematographer Mandy Walker, costume designer Isis Mussenden, documentary editor Kate Amend, executive David Linde, marketing executive Christina Kounelias, composer Charles Bernstein, production designer Wynn Thomas, short filmmaker Jon Bloom sound designer Teri Dornan and writer Larry Karaszewski. They are all eligible to run again after a two-year hiatus except for Bernstein and Bloom, who are permanently termed off the board because they have passed the new lifetime maximum of 12 years.
Each of the Academy’s 18 branches are represented by three governors, except for the new Production and Technology Branch, which has one. The governors serve staggered three-year terms, with one seat from each branch up for election each year.
The incumbent governors who remain on the board and did not face election this year are Pam Abdy, Bonnie Arnold, Lesley Barber, Dion Beebe, Howard Berger, Susanne Bier, Jason Blum, Gary C. Bourgeois, Brooke Breton, Paul Cameron, Ruth E. Carter, Eduardo Castro, Megan Colligan, Bill Corso, Paul Debevec, Peter Devlin, Tom Duffield, Charles Fox, DeVon Franklin, Rodrigo García, Donna Gigliotti, Chris Hegedus, Richard Hicks, Laura C. Kim, Marlee Matlin, Missy Parker, Jason Reitman, Nancy Richardson, Howard A. Rodman, Eric Roth, Terilyn A. Shropshire, Kim Taylor-Coleman, Jennifer Todd, Jean Tsien, Marlon West, Rita Wilson and Janet Yang.
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