Leadership Role: Trails Advisory Committee Member

Trails Advisory Committee Member

After completing a degree in musicology at Carleton College (focusing on twentieth century experimental music), Shaun spent a year in Sri Lanka on a Fulbright fellowship studying the country’s ethnic conflict. He returned to Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami to investigate the uses of international aid money in reconstruction. He made his first documentary during that time, a short piece on the murder of a prominent Sri Lankan journalist. Since then, Shaun has produced and directed short documentaries and commercials around the world. BORN THIS WAY, his first feature-length documentary, premiered at the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival and won the Outfest Los Angeles grand jury award for best documentary. Shaun lives in Los Angeles.

Trails Advisory Committee Member

Christopher Hawthorne is an American journalist and television director who served as the architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2004 to 2018. In 2018, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti appointed him as the city’s first Chief Design Officer.

In 2018, he directed the documentary That Far Corner for the KCET series Artbound about architect Frank Lloyd Wright‘s work in Los Angeles.^[4] He also directed another Artbound episode titled Third Los Angeles.