Statement From Former IDA Staff On Recent Departures
Maggie Bowman, former Interim Director of Advocacy and Programming
Jina Chung, former Senior Director of Development and Partnerships
Amy Halpin, former Deputy Director
Poh Si Teng, former Director of IDA Funds and the Enterprise Program
“As former directors of the International Documentary Association (IDA), it has been an honor to serve our community by supporting and advocating for independent documentary filmmakers. As leaders of the organization, we all worked to ensure that the same values we advocate for independent documentary filmmakers across the globe — respect, equity, accountability and transparency — were reflected inside our organization.
From July through October 2021, we made several attempts to raise concerns with the Executive Director and several Board members about workplace conduct and organizational actions that did not align with IDA’s stated values. Our attempts to engage in dialogue were unsuccessful. We then sent a letter communicating our concerns to the entire Board to engage in an open and transparent dialogue and to forge a path forward together that would safeguard IDA’s work, the well-being of our colleagues and teams, and the resources entrusted to us by our funders and supporters.
The process and investigation that followed over the next nearly two months left us isolated, further diminished, and increasingly concerned about the future of the organization and colleagues on staff. Our concerns about workplace conduct and what we perceived as the Board’s and the Executive Director’s betrayal of public commitments to the field are what caused us to reach out to the Board in the first place. The Board’s handling of our complaint and its unwillingness to engage in a dialogue about our clearly stated sets of concerns ultimately caused us to resign collectively in early January.
We leave behind a staff that has demonstrated a deep commitment to the work and values of IDA’s mission. We sincerely hope that the field will support this dedicated staff in continuing to advocate for the changes necessary for an accountable and transparent IDA for our field and a healthy, safe work environment for its staff.”