Actor and performer Peter Coyote has worked with some of the world’s most distinguished filmmakers, including Barry Levinson, Roman Polanski, Pedro Almodovar, Steven Spielberg, Steven Soderberg, Sidney Pollack and many others. He is a former member of the Literature Panel of the National Endowment of the Arts and a former Chairman of the California State Arts Council. During his tenure as Chairman, expenditures on the arts in the state rose from one million to 16 million dollars annually. Coyote has been engaged in political and social causes since his early teens. His memoir of the 1960’s counter-culture, Sleeping Where I Fall, was critically acclaimed and appeared on three bestseller lists in both hardback and paperback. A chapter from that book, “Carla’s Story,” won the 1993/94 Pushcart Prize for Excellence in Nonfiction. A renowned Francophile, Coyote is also an ordained Buddhist, practicing for 36 years and ordained as a priest in August 2011. Currently, Coyote is working on a new book about politics.

Formerly, Bronstein held the positions of editor-at-large, executive vice president and editor, and senior vice president and executive editor, for the San Francisco Chronicle. Prior to that, he was executive editor of the San Francisco Examiner, having previously served as managing editor for news. Bronstein began as a reporter with the newspaper 20 years prior, specializing in investigative projects, and was a foreign correspondent for eight years. He has won awards for his coverage of the Philippines from the Overseas Press Club, Associated Press, the World Affairs Council and Media Alliance. Bronstein was a 1986 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work in the Philippines and went on to cover conflicts in other parts of Southeast Asia, El Salvador, Peru and the Middle East. Previously, he was a reporter with KQED-TV in San Francisco. Bronstein is chairman of the board for the Center for Investigative Reporting and sits on the advisory board of Litquake, one of the largest literary festivals in the country.

Honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century,” filmmaker Tiffany Shlain is a founder of The Webby Awards, co-founder of The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences and a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. Her work in film and technology has received 48 awards and distinctions. Shlain’s films include “Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness,” about the importance of reproductive rights in America, and “The Tribe,” an exploration of American Jewish identity & the Barbie doll. Shlain’s film “Yelp: With Apologies to Allen Ginsberg’s Howl,” focused on society’s addiction to technology and the importance of “unplugging.” Her latest acclaimed feature documentary, “Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology,” explores what it means to be “connected” in the 21st Century. She has just begun a new film series called “Let it Ripple: Mobile Films for Global Change.” Tiffany is a visiting professor at The University of Wales, a member of the advisory board of M.I.T.’s Geospatial Lab, and she was among a group of technology leaders selected to advise Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on role of Internet in society.

A leader of Silicon Valley, Michael Moritz is a parent of two former French American International School students. He joined Sequoia Capital in 1986 after working as a reporter for Time, and following the success of his 1984 book The Little Kingdom: the Private Story of Apple Computer. Moritz has served on the Boards of Directors of Google, Yahoo!, PayPal, Flextronics, GreenDot, Kayak and Zappos. Sequoia Capital's investment in Google helped him achieve the top ranking in Forbes' "Midas List" of the dealmakers in the technology industry in 2006 and 2007, and inclusion in the 2007 "Time 100.” In 2009, Moritz published Return to the Little Kingdom: How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed the World, a revised and expanded follow-up to his 1984 best-seller

An associate professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, Moyara Ruehsen is an award-winning instructor and economist. She holds three graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins University (MHS, MA, PhD) and is a certified anti-money laundering specialist (CAMS). Ruehsen teaches courses on international finance, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing policies, and specifically how our financial "footprints" have helped the forensic accounting profession provide critical evidence for solving and prosecuting terrorism financing cases. At the French American International School’s 50th anniversary celebration, Ruehsen will discuss the positive side of the lack of financial privacy in our inter-connected electronic world.

 

A technology-industry veteran with more than thirty years of European, U.S., and international experience, Guerrino De Luca has an extensive background in product strategy, marketing and management. During his tenure as Logitech's executive leader from 1998 to 2008, the company posted nine consecutive years of record profits and its annual revenue grew from $400 million to more than $2.1 billion. Prior to joining Logitech, Mr. De Luca served as executive vice president of worldwide marketing for Apple Computer, Inc. He began his career at Olivetti in Ivrea, Italy. Mr. De Luca holds a B.S. degree in electronic engineering from the University of Rome, Italy.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña is a performance artist, writer, activist, radical pedagogue and director of the performance troupe La Pocha Nostra. Born in Mexico City, he moved to the US in 1978. Through his performances and writing Gómez-Peña has contributed to the debates on cultural diversity, border culture and US-Mexico relations. His art work has been presented in more than 800 venues across throughout the world. A MacArthur Fellow, Bessie and American Book Award winner, Gómez-Peña is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines in the US, Mexico, and Europe and a contributing editor to The Drama Review (NYU-MIT). Gómez-Peña is a Senior Fellow in the Hemispheric Institute of performance and Politics and a Patron for the London-based Live Art Development Agency.

First commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony at age 17 (while a senior at International High School) Nathaniel Stookey has since collaborated with a remarkable range of artists, from Frederica von Stade to Lemony Snicket, from the Philadelphia Orchestra to The Mars Volta. His composition The Composer is Dead is one of the five most performed orchestral works of the 21st century, worldwide. He is currently at work on a new string quartet for Kronos Quartet. Nathaniel is a graduate of French American International School (class of 1988) and is a current parent of 2 children in the lower school.

International Baccalaureate film students, under the supervision of film instructor Matthew Perifano, present tales of the school through interviews by school pioneers, former heads of schools, faculty, alumni and families. Tapings were held in New York, Paris and San Francisco during the fall of 2011.