Defenders of the Mountains: The Filmmakers

Mari-Lynn Evans, Producer

Mari-Lynn is the Executive Producer of "Changes", a magazine format program hosted by Nick Clooney, which is another SBIR funded program airing on the FOX Health Network; the children's television program and video " Geezbo's Alley", the first multimedia SBIR NCI Fast-Track; the documentary "Standing in the Safety Zone" hosted by Surgeon General David Satcher airing on PBS and FOX Health Network; and "John Glenn: The International Year of Older Adults" for PBS. She is also the Executive Producer of "Integrative Medicine: Body, Mind, and Spirit", a 13 week series for American's Health Network and the FOX Health Network hosted by Naomi Judd. She is also the Executive Producer of a live audience hour special of the same name for the network.

Mari-Lynn has produced, scripted, and directed several commercials, videos, and infomercials. She has also scripted, developed and produced many multimedia products for Fortune 500 companies and premier aging organizations, including the American Geriatrics Society. She serves as a media and brand development consultant to international corporate, media, governmental, and support organizations and is the lead consultant on the senior market to Procter & Gamble.

Mari-Lynn has extensive experience conducting research and developing multimedia programs receiving major funding awards from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Aging. She is also the recipient of the first Fast-Track multimedia funding from the National Cancer Institute and is a grant recipient from the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Health Care Financing Administration, and many other national organizations and foundations. She is also the recipient of several national awards including the 1999 US Small Business Administration Tibbetts Award and a Bronze Award in the National Mature Media Awards. Mari-Lynn has degrees in psychology, gerontology and women studies. She is from Bulltown, West Virginia.

Phylis Geller, Producer/Writer

Phylis Geller has been a producer and media executive for over thirty years. She has overseen programs in all genres, including history, science, drama, performance and children's programs. Projects under her supervision have won some of the most prestigious awards in broadcasting.

Geller is currently serving as Executive Producer of Depression, a PBS special produced by WGBH and Twin Cities Public Television. Geller was the writer/producer for the three-part public television series The Appalachians. She was writer/producer/director of COSMIC JOURNEY: The Voyager Interstellar Mission and Message, for A&E, which was nominated for the national Emmy award as Best Science Documentary, 2004. She was executive producer and co-writer of Korean War Stories, a PBS special which won the national Emmy award for Best Historical Documentary, 2002. Also for PBS, she was executive producer and co-writer of Tesla, Master of Lightning, and producer of pledge specials with Suze Orman, two of which have been nominated for the national Daytime Emmy as Best Service Program.

Until 1999, Geller was senior vice president of cultural programming and new media at WETA in Washington, D.C. She was executive producer on The Face of Russia with the Library of Congress, executive-in-charge for Ken Burns's Thomas Jefferson , Lewis & Clark, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Jazz, and executive producer of the performance series The Kennedy Center Presents and In Performance at the White House. Prior to joining WETA, Geller was senior vice president of national productions at KCET/ Hollywood, where she supervised multi-part documentary series such as The Astronomers, Secret Intelligence, and Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World. Specials included Killing Machines for NOVA. At KCET, she produced numerous dramatic programs for American Playhouse and specials for Great Performances.

Geller has also served as Head of Special Projects for Mandalay Media Arts, and as senior vice president for national and international production at Maryland Public Television. She began her career at Thirteen/WNET, New York, on The Great American Dream Machine, continuing on to the series Theater in America, where she produced Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein and All Over by Edward Albee, and worked on over thirty other plays for PBS.

Ms. Geller is a graduate of Smith College. She is married to Frederick Pollack, poet and adjunct professor at George Washington University.