Free Public Event
Thursday, March 12, 6:30–8:00 p.m.
Santa Catalina School’s Mary Johnson Recital Hall
Santa Catalina's inaugural Woman in Residence, award-winning film producer Marie Cantin, will be joined by filmmaker and screenwriter Michael Miner for a discussion on storytelling, creativity, leadership, and navigating careers in film and media. The conversation will be moderated by journalist Suzanne Saunders Shaw.
About Marie Cantin
Marie Cantin, a Santa Catalina alumna from the Class of 1970, is an award-winning producer whose career spans independent and studio film as well as television. Credits include Collateral, Save the Last Dance, Dante’s Peak, and The Waterdance, which won both a Sundance Film Festival Audience Award and a Film Independent Spirit Award. A longtime faculty member and former Associate Dean at the American Film Institute Conservatory, she mentored 185 award-winning MFA thesis films, including projects that earned an Academy Award nomination and 17 Student Academy Awards. She is the recipient of the Directors Guild of America’s 2017 Frank Capra Achievement Award and was honored in 2025 with Santa Catalina’s Distinguished Alumna Award.
About Michael Miner
Michael Miner is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and educator best known as the co-writer of the original RoboCop, which received a Saturn Award for Best Screenplay for its subversive and satirical narrative. Miner began his career as a cinematographer before evolving into a large-format black-and-white landscape photographer whose exhibition prints are available at Photography West Gallery in Carmel. For eight years, he worked with the nonprofit InsideOut Writers, teaching self-expression to incarcerated juveniles in Los Angeles.
About Suzanne Saunders Shaw
Suzanne Saunders Shaw, a Santa Catalina alumna from the Class of 1970, is an award-winning broadcast journalist who spent more than three decades reporting, producing, and anchoring prime-time news in the San Francisco Bay Area. A four-time regional Emmy Award winner and recipient of the prestigious Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, Shaw is also a Santa Catalina Distinguished Alumna Award recipient.