Regan Brashear
Introduction (2-3 lines)
Award-winning producer, director and impact producer Regan Brashear is the founder of Making Change Media, a social issue documentary production, impact strategy & distribution company. Originally from Virginia, Regan has been working on labor, disability, LGBT+, and racial justice issues for over 25 years now through documentary film, impact campaigns, union organizing, community forums, teen theater, and grassroots activism.
Originally from Virginia, Regan (they/she) has been working on racial, disability, LGBT+, and economic justice issues for over 25 years now through documentary film, impact campaigns, union organizing, producing community forums, directing a teen theater troupe, and grassroots activism. Based between Oakland and Santa Cruz, CA, for the past twenty four years, Regan Brashear is the founder of Making Change Media, a social issue documentary production, impact strategy & distribution company. Past projects include partnership development and impact producing for Waging Change on the movement to end the subminimum wage for tipped workers; producing the #NoBodyIsDisposable Summer Film Series to raise awareness about care rationing in the times of Covid and to lift up the #NoBodyIsDisposable campaign; coordinating a multi-city tour for I Am Maris for ro*co films for National Mental Health Awareness week; developing strategy and implementing a national impact campaign for Emmy Award-winning Time for Ilhan, the origin story of rising political star Congresswoman Ilhan Omar; serving as impact producer and educational distributor for DEEJ, a Peabody Award winning, Emmy nominated film about autism, inclusion and neurodiversity, broadcast on America Reframed 2017-2020, and much more, including consulting with filmmakers on impact and distribution. Previously, Regan served as a Producer and Community Engagement Coordinator at Open Eye Pictures, doing project development for the place-based, memory-mapping iOS app, Tributopia; community engagement for the Academy Award-shortlisted film, Under Our Skin; and as Co-Producer for The Grove, a film about the National AIDS Memorial Grove. Both films aired across the country on PBS stations in 2011.
Regan is also the producer/director/editor of the award-winning documentary on technology, bioethics and disability, FIXED: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement, which aired on PBS stations around the country from 2015 through 2018 via American Public Television, also screening in over 30 festivals in 16 countries, and broadcast on television and airlines in several other countries. FIXED has been a top seller with the educational distributor New Day Films since its release in 2013 and is now taught widely in disability studies, sociology and science studies curriculums in high schools, colleges, universities and medical schools worldwide. Regan is an active member and former Head of Launch and Member Services of the educational distribution coop New Day Films. Brashear has a BA in American Studies (Highest Honors, Phi Beta Kappa) and a MA in Social Documentation (Documentary Film) from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Regan is committed to racial and disability justice, collective liberation for all and the lifelong process of uprooting white supremacy. They are an alumnus of the Catalyst Project’s Anne Braden Anti-Racist Organizer Training Program for white social justice activists, and as a member of SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice) - Bay Area chapter, they have helped facilitate the Study and Action program for white folks to begin digging into the history of white supremacy since 2021. They are also a member of GIPA (Global Impact Producers Alliance), Film Fatales, International Documentary Association, FWD-DOC, and the Disability Studies Association. Regan served as a judge for Superfest Disability Film Festival for six years, as a programming consultant for the Mountainfilm Festival in 2021, and as a co-organizer of the Reel Work May Day Labor Film Festival from 2002-2005.
Regan is currently studying to become a somatics coach through the Strozzi Institute to support social justice organizers, filmmakers, artists and the wider community in showing up more powerfully in their work and lives. She and her partner are also in the process of trying to adopt.
Since its release, Regan has travelled extensively with Fixed, sharing the film with audiences of all ages around the world. They are no longer doing public speaking events with the film. However, if you'd like to discuss bringing someone from the film to your university, high school or organization, please contact us.
