MELISSA LESH (Director, Producer) recently co-directed, produced and edited a feature documentary for Amazon Studios, Wildcat. In 2019 she contributed principal cinematography to another feature doc, The Story of Plastic, which aired on Discovery for Earth Day in 2020 and won an Emmy Award® in 2021.
Lesh founded Emerging Earth Films in 2014 as a way to bridge the arts and sciences, focusing on wildlife and conservation stories. Her documentary short, Person of the Forest, was a partnership with National Geographic that depicted newly discovered cultural behaviors in wild orangutans in Borneo. Since the film’s premiere, it has screened at more than 35 film festivals around the world, been viewed 2.3 million times through National Geographic’s online platform and received a Vimeo Staff Pick.
Lesh is a 2019 Sundance Documentary Fund, Sandbox Films grantee and 2022 artist in residence at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York. Born in Mumbai, India, she now calls Richmond, Virginia, home.
TREVOR BECK FROST (Director, Producer) recently co-directed and produced a feature documentary for Amazon Studios, Wildcat. Frost is a former photojournalist who produced photo essays for National Geographic magazine, The Washington Post and Wired magazine, among other publications. He has received five grant awards from the National Geographic Society for his storytelling work and in 2019 he became a Sundance Institute Documentary Fund grantee for this documentary.
Frost is a senior adviser to Prince Hussain Aga Khan on global conservation issues and an Eddie Bauer Adventure Guide. As a storyteller his main interests at the moment are stories about people with unique relationships with wildlife and wild places. He lives in Richmond, Virginia, with three cats named Gecko, Cobra, and Bug, as well as Mana the ball python.