Dawn Mikkelson (Producer/Senior Director)
Named to AV Multimedia Producer’s 2004 National “Top Producers Showcase”, Mikkelson is both an award-winning media producer and documentary filmmaker. From National PBS broadcasts to being selected as a Featured Video Podcast by iTunes, Mikkelson’s work in film and video has received international acclaim across broad delivery platforms. Mikkelson has completed three award-winning feature documentaries. Her second film, THIS obedience (www.thisobedience.com), won numerous festival awards and is currently being distributed for national PBS broadcast by American Public Television. Mikkelson just wrapped post-production on her third documentary, Green Green Water (www.greengreenwater.com), which premiered in October of 2006 in Toronto. The film will be touring the world throughout 2007 and 2008. Mikkelson is currently negotiating broadcast agreements in both the United States and Canada.

At the age of 25, Mikkelson formed her first company with a business partner, Aquaries Media, a full-service multimedia production company. After five years, Mikkelson branched off on her own to start Emergence Pictures (www.emergencepictures.com), focusing exclusively on video and film. Emergence Pictures’ mission is to inform, educate, and inspire audiences by telling the stories of organizations, companies, and individuals that are changing our world.

A former television news reporter at an ABC affiliate, Mikkelson graduated magna cum laude, Phi Kappa Phi, with departmental honors from the University of Minnesota in Political Science and Women’s Studies and a minor in Music. Mikkelson has spoken at numerous festival panels on documentary filmmaking, human rights and environmental issues, as well as speaking at colleges and universities across the country.


Melissa Koch (Producer/Director)
As an emerging filmmaker, Koch is directing her first feature length documentary. Her father worked as a Northwest Airlines mechanic for 23 years, and Koch’s personal experience brings an intimate and dynamic perspective to The Red Tail. She is a multi-disiplinary artist/storyteller who has worked with narrative short and documentary video, photography, audio, sculpture, and bookmaking. Koch studied cultural theory, media arts (photography and video), and social change at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and the University of Tasmania, Australia. She is an active organizer and has worked with community organizations for ten years, including the Youth Farm and Market Project, Minneapolis MN, Vanguard Youth Services, Portland, OR, Americorps Northwest Service Academy, Portland OR, and District 202, Minneapolis, MN, and currently serves as the Community Programs Director for In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre in Minneapolis.

Adrian Danciu (Director of Photography)
Adrian is an award-winning cameraman that started his career in Romania where he worked for Romanian Television and was involved with projects ranging from breaking news, documentary dramas to educational videos. His assignments took him from crowded city streets to remote regions of the Carpathian Mountains and underwater caves of the Banat region. He is also credited in documentaries for Duna TV and Hungarian Television in Budapest, Hungary and WDR in Germany.
Upon moving to Minneapolis, MN in 1999 Adrian contributed to programs originated on NBC, PBS and several production companies. He also enjoyed photographing treasure hunters for National Geographic Television in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caroline Rhea Show at the Mall of America and Frozen Feet Films independent documentary film project: Urban Explorers. He is currently in production with a story about our ancestors: The Early Humans in Europe.

Chris Waller (Producer/Writer)
As a child Chris Waller loved nothing more than when her teacher pulled the screen over the chalkboard and threaded film through the projector. These little movies sparked in her a love of documentary film and a life long quest to better understand others. This fascination led Chris to believe that she could do more than just understand; she could help. Thus began a career in social service working with HIV/AIDS and homeless youth. After twenty years Chris decided to merge her love of film and her social service background. With a newly minted degree in screenwriting she has fulfilled a life long ambition to work on a feature length documentary.

Chris has written for numerous independent film producers with subjects ranging from Las Vegas pit girls to child soldiers. She brings with her the inspiration of a writer and the passion of the wife of a union man. Chris has a deep commitment to foster a better understanding of one another through film. She also likes horses and candy.

Chris is the proud mother of three daughters. She graduated with a BS degree in human services from the U of M and holds an AS degree in screenwriting from MCTC.


Lori Barbero (Music Supervisor)
Lori Barbero was the co-founder and drummer for Babes in Toyland, a hard rock band from Minneapolis. They were some of the precursors of what came to be known in the early 1990s as RiotGrrl, a subgenre of grunge music. In 1990, Babes in Toyland toured with Sonic Youth throughout Europe. The group's break into the national scene came in 1992 with the release of their first full-length album Fontanelle and inclusion in the documentary film 1991: The Year Punk Broke. The following year, they joined bands including Dinosaur Junior, Alice in Chains, and Rage Against the Machine for Lollapalooza 1993. Since the band’s breakup, Barbero has been deeply committed to the independent music scene in Minnesota and around the world. She has also been in half a dozen other bands; Sean Na Na, Eggtwist, The Willis Project and most recently, Koalas. Nobody plays drums like Lori. Then there are the more recent incarnations; Lori as DJ, Lori as party promoter, there are even some rumors about her work as a paramilitary operative, but those have yet to be confirmed.




Anonymous NWA Flight Attendant (Producer/Research/Soul)
As an NWA insider, this member of our team will remain anonymous until the premiere of The Red Tail. With a degree in journalism and a lengthy career with NWA, our flight attendant left the company in 2005 when the mechanics went on strike, refusing to cross their picket line. Since that time, she has been working with Director/Producer Dawn Mikkelson to tell this story.

In her words: “When I was a little girl growing up in a major Midwestern city, my dad used to load us up into the family car and drive us to the airport. He parked the car directly across the road from the runway, and we all marveled at the airplanes touching down, and taking off directly over our heads. My dad’s unbridled enthusiasm for flying machines, along with a passion for travel, instilled in me a powerful curiosity of aviation. I finally succumbed to the lure of the skies and was hired as a flight attendant in the late 1980s by a solid company with a promising future: Northwest Airlines. That first year I was flying all over the world, and seeing places I had only dreamt about. I was in love with my job.

Just one short year later things changed. Terms like leveraged buyout and corporate raiders were tossed around by employees. This marked the beginning of a turbulent downward spiral for Northwest employees, as the threat of bankruptcy and layoffs was now hanging over our heads. From that point on we never again felt secure about our jobs, our pay, our benefits or our futures. We did what good employees do who believe in the company they work for…we soldiered on, while a procession of CEOs came and went. Things went from bad to worse – a bitter pilots’ strike, the trauma of 9/11, skyrocketing fuel prices, contentious contract negotiations, and finally, a showdown between the mechanics and Northwest management. The mechanics went on strike in August 2005, and the following month NWA declared bankruptcy – the first time in its 79-year history. I chose to quit because I did not want to cross the mechanics’ picket line. I supported their cause, and could no longer justify working for a company that placed profit above all else. To me, Northwest had lost its soul.

My friends who remain employed by the airline endure experiences that no one should ever have to deal with: their pay cut nearly in half, benefits slashed, pensions hanging in limbo. All employees continue to deal with the tough issues of how to pay their mortgage and buy food for their families. Some work two, even three jobs to stay solvent. Some have lost their homes. Most are bitter, and cannot understand how this chain of events was allowed to happen. Those that left the company and those still there all feel a profound sadness and loss of control.

I was one of the lucky ones. I had enough money saved to survive the transition to a new career. What’s happening at Northwest is truly a microcosm of what’s happening to middle class America: corporate greed, outsourcing, layoffs, globalization, loss of pensions, union-busting, and the beginning of the end for the American dream. This happens to good people every day. That’s a big story that needs to be told. And I’m going to be the one to do it.”

Carly Zuckweiler (Sound Designer)
Zuckweiler is the pimary audio engineer and sound designer at HDMG, a video post-production house in Eden Prairie, MN. She has worked with a broad spectrum of clients including Cargill, Regis, Best Buy, Target, and Honeywell. Prior to working with HDMG she has worked on staff and freelanced as a sound designer and/or audio engineer for many clients including Ghost Productions (Roseville, MN) Quad Recording Studios (New York, NY), Ripon Public Schools, Paradime Media, Inc., the Oshkosh Symphony Orchestra, the Wisconsin Symphonic Winds, and Pop/Rock group Subdivider. In 2005 she worked as an assistant engineer to the award-winning sound designer, Brian Ricke at Fuzzy Slippers Studio (Minneapolis, MN). Most recently, Zuckwiler mixed audio for the feature documentary Green Green Water, targeted to have its broadcast premiere in 2008. Zuckweler is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh with a Bachelor of Music degree in Recording Technology.