Our Media Team

WALTER DOMINGUEZ

Producer / Director

Walter Dominguez is the Project Director, Producer, and Writer for the series. He brings his production experience as a director, assistant director, 2nd unit director, writer and producer in Hollywood studio features and television series, independent features, and documentary video production. Walter wrote and produced the independent documentary feature, Weaving the Past: Journey of Discovery, which focuses on early 20th century Los Angeles progressives and immigrant Mexican revolutionaries. His credits as an assistant director include The Andromeda Strain, and Oklahoma Crude for Hollywood legends Robert Wise and Stanley Kramer, Play It As It Lays from auteur filmmaker Frank Perry, and Steven Ihnat’s contemporary western The Honkers. He has directed 2nd-unit for the cult thriller feature, Devil Times Five, as well as for Frank Perry’s Play It As It Lays. He has been a member of the Director’s Guild of America (DGA) since 1972, as well as a member of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP), Film Independent (FIND), and the International Documentary Association (IDA). Walter is a graduate in History from Occidental College, and did graduate work in Cinema Studies at the USC School of Cinema.

WILLIAM DEVERELL

Executive Producer/Lead History Consultant

William Deverell, a nationally recognized historian of the 19th and 20th century American West, is Professor of History at the University of Southern California, and Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. A graduate of Stanford, with an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Princeton University, and a former faculty member at UCLA and the California Institute of Technology, he has published numerous books and papers on the history of California and the American West, including the widely- acclaimed, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of its Mexican Past, the landmark history book that forms the nucleus of content for this television series.

HECTOR GALAN

Supervising Producer

Hector Galán has been creating documentary films for over twenty years. He has produced and directed eleven films for the PBS series FRONTLINE, two films for THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, and many critically acclaimed and award-winning independent films such as feature documentaries, music documentaries, and documentary series. Galán founded his independent production company, the Austin Texas based Galán Inc. Television/Film in 1984. Most recently, Galan Inc. completed production on The Big Squeeze and is at work on The War Within, a two hour PBS Film  that will the story of Latinos in America’s Wars.

JOHN D. ESTES

Producer

Upon graduating from The University of California at Berkeley with a Bachelor’s Degree in English, John began his career in Hollywood  working for production designer Garvin Eddy on the hit television shows Rosanne and A Different World. He went on to become a freelance writer and story/project developer for clients such as Cinema Line, Amblin Entertainment, Electronic Arts Inc. and Warner Bros. Most recently, John produced the short film Handle With Care (Silver Medalist at the 2007 Park City Film Music Festival) and served as Associate Producer on Walter Dominguez’s Weaving The Past: Journey of Discovery.

JILL SHARER

Producer

Jill began her career as a writer for the L.A. Weekly, L.A. Times, and the Village Voice.  In 1995, Jill moved from print journalism to television where she spent the next 12 years writing, producing, directing, and developing dozens of programs and documentaries for National Geographic, the History Channel, Travel Channel, and A&E. Highlights include The Conquest of Hawaii, a History Channel documentary that is now required viewing for high school students in Hawaii, and the cult hit reality series, Scariest Places on Earth, airing on Fox Family Channel. Jill recently completed writing narration for the Orlando Bloom-narrated documentary, Everest: A Climb for Peace and is currently directing the documentary feature Kalderash Dreams: Stories of Literacy in the Gypsy World in Romania. Her passion for Los Angeles history has led her to enthusiastically become part of the media team for Whitewashed Adobe.

LISA TAUSCHER

Line Producer

A native of Seattle, WA, Lisa earned her B.S. in Visual Communications from Western Washington University. Lisa brings sixteen years experience as a line and field producer for documentaries and commercials including ten years as Head of Production at Go Film, a major commercial and music video company based in Hollywood and New York City. Lisa produced the award-winning documentary Beyond the Summit: The Everest Environmental Expedition which aired on National Geographic in 222 countries and won numerous awards including a Cine Golden Eagle.  She is also currently in development on her documentary entitled Education War: A Look at the Battle for Public Education Choices and the Gray Area in Between.

NICK LIGONIS

Associate Producer

Nick has been involved in the world of independent film and media production for over six years, running the gamut of professional roles as a director, producer, actor, composer, photographer, editor, and graphic designer.  Nick recently produced the award-winning short film Side Effect.  Nick received his Bachelor’s degree in English from the the University of Florida and went on to study Music and Cinema Production at Los Angeles City College.   His versatility and practical, hands-on expertise with so many aspects of the filmmaking process keeps him in demand and freelancing for a variety of clients such as NonStop Riot, Red Bull, and 6 ft 1 Productions.

GREG GARNEAU

Project Consultant

Greg Garneau is a business consultant in Durham, NC.  He brings a career’s worth of experience in running small businesses, both in the for-profit and non-profit sector.  Most recently, he retired as the Executive Director of the National Press Photographers Association and now serves as a member of the Durham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission as well as volunteering with the Durham Bicycle Cooperative.  His experience in the film industry include serving as the business manager of Anthology Film Archives and as a board member of the Southern Documentary Fund. He is a graduate of Occidental College and Columbia University Business School.

BILLY MARCHESE

Cinematographer / Editor

Billy began his career in 1990 as a camera assistant in Seattle while working towards his Bachelor degree in Visual Communications.  In 2000, Billy served as Director and Cinematographer on the award winning documentary film Beyond the Summit: The Everest Environmental Expedition spending 3 months in Bhutan, India and Nepal shooting the film. He has directed and photographed many outstanding documentary programs for television for clients such as National Geographic, BBC, PBS, Discovery Networks, ESPN, MTV, and others. For the last three years, Billy has been working on his Dezart Cinematic-produced documentary, Fires from Above: The Fires Below, shooting on location in the Amazon Basin in Ecuador and Peru, documenting the impact of environmental abuses by global petroleum companies and the resulting cultural and spatial dislocations of indigenous tribal people.

MARIA HONRADO

Assistant Editor / Graphic Design

Maria hails from Madrid, Spain where she studied Visual Arts at the prestigious Jaime Ferran College.  She came to the U.S. in 2005 to study Cinema Production at Los Angeles City College. Upon completing her studies, Maria began her career in post-production on the award winning short film Side Effect, editing and designing titles for the film’s trailer.  She went on to edit one of the finalist entries that formed The Experimental Witch, a feature film based on the book by bestselling author Paul Coelho, which premiered at the Rome Film Festival.  She teamed up with Project Director Walter Dominguez in 2008 working as an editor and motion graphics designer on his documentary feature Weaving the Past: Journey of Discovery.