Ellen is the Founder and CEO of WaterBear Network, overseeing the strategy and direction of the new interactive video-on-demand platform dedicated to storytelling around the UN Sustainable Development Goals. WaterBear is already partnered with over 140 global NGOs and is currently available in 194 countries.
Prior to founding WaterBear, Ellen was the Owner and CEO of Off the Fence, a global nonfiction production and distribution company based in Amsterdam. Under her leadership Off the Fence acquired, produced, and co-produced over 6,000 hours of content and won hundreds of awards for productions including their latest feature documentary MY OCTOPUS TEACHER, a Netflix Original which won the Bafta and Oscar for Best Documentary in 2021.
Ellen is a seasoned Entrepreneur, Executive Producer, Impact Producer and Distributor and has produced over 500 hours herself to date. She is the Chairperson Emeritus of the Jackson Hole Film Festival Board and an avid supporter of conservation, land regeneration and biodiversity. She runs her own NGO dedicated to the mitigation of air pollution. Her experience in factual programming and feature documentaries is extensive in both production and distribution.
Ellen has been presented with numerous awards, including Wildscreen’s Christopher Parsons Outstanding Achievement Award 2018 and the CogX Global Goals Impact Award 2022. She has three children and a great passion for the outdoors. Ellen’s board experience is extensive including almost 13 years on the Jackson Hole Film Festival board, 5 years on the Wildscreen board and various advisory functions.
- Our relationship with nature is founded, first and foremost, on physical and psychological necessity. To be ‘well’ as human ‘animals’, we have an innate need to connect regularly (in some way) with our natural environment.
- Ideally this experience of nature should take the form of a direct immersion: walking, smelling, listening. However, natural history photography and film making also play an essential role in informing, inspiring and encouraging this connection with the natural world.
- The natural history film genre encompasses a wide spectrum. The objective of Waterbear is to go beyond the blue chip ‘chocolate box’ (magnificent but low-impact) type of content. The platform, founded in 1994, now available in 194 countries, is a collaborative project between 140 NGOs, committed brands, and film makers. Ellen describes the platform as a bid to ‘share her world’ with those in society suffering from a sense of hopelessness and alienation in terms of the environmental crisis we are collectively facing.
- The access offered via film gives the viewer a chance to connect, choose and act. To date, 3% of Waterbear viewers become environmental activists. Films can serve as a ‘touch point’.
- Narrative is all important in the process of raising awareness and encouraging an active response and engagement. “A good story can achieve a change of heart”. Ellen believes that the pressure from committed individual viewers is what will ultimately encourage governments to do the right thing in terms of policy to protect nature and biodiversity.
- The content of the platform goes beyond nature and reflects the 17 most important values as expressed in the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
- Business is playing a vital role in the process of placing a true value on nature. An example: the newly founded Landbanking has developed software capable of establishing the true value of wilderness via an analysis of habitats.
- The business dimension of Waterbear is essential. Its ability to encourage and support environmental campaigns depends on its financial viability. To this end, it is currently developing an impact framework, using their data, to establish at exactly what point in a film the viewers are moved to act. The aim being to render the impact of any film quantifiable and qualifiable.
