Photo credit: Stephanie Ramones/Contigo Photos + Films

Melissa Beatriz

Founder / Director (she/her/ella)

Melissa Beatriz is a Uruguayan American documentary filmmaker, cultural producer, and researcher whose work focuses on the intersection of social justice, media arts/culture, and policy. Melissa is the Founder/Director of Actívate Stories, a media arts entity that produces collaborative documentaries, engages in cultural preservation, and develops creative strategies focused on art and social change.

Melissa is currently directing two documentary films as a first-time director. La Lucha Sigue (The Struggle Continues) is a short animated documentary that centers three immigrant rights leaders who worked to shut down the Berks Detention Center in Pennsylvania, one of three prisons nationwide that had detained immigrant children and families. Philly Rumba is a short archival documentary that features African American and Latin American percussionists/cultural keepers who have played a role in preserving the culture of rumba percussion in the Philadelphia region.

She is a 2025 Leeway Media Artist + Activist in Residence at the People’s Budget Office, 2025 Flaherty Film Seminar Fellow, 2022 Al Día 40 Under 40 honoree, 2019 Leeway Transformation Awardee, and 2020 Fellow of the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) Leadership Institute. Her independent media work has been supported by Scribe Video Center, ARTisPHL, Lenfest Institute for Journalism, People’s Media Fund, Velocity Fund, Doc Society: Good Pitch Local Philadelphia, Leeway Foundation, Double Exposure Scholars program, and Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Philadelphia Day Lab.

Since 2010, Melissa has collaborated with artists and arts organizations throughout the Greater Philadelphia region as a producer, resource mobilizer, and communications strategist. She has worked closely with grassroots organizations that center diverse communities and focus on immigrant justice, racial justice, and cultural justice.

As an arts administrator and advocate with expertise in development and program design, she has mobilized resources to collaboratively develop projects, programs, and small organizations. Through advocacy, she has played a role in shifting local conversations about cultural equity, by participating in Philadelphia-based groups such as the Arts Funding Coalition, Securing the Roots, the Lenfest Visioning Table, and the Arts & Culture Taskforce Permanence subcommittee.

Since 2010, she has been a guest/contributing writer, journalist, and editor at a range of publications. She has a Joint PhD in Communication & Social Welfare, as well as an MSW from the University of Pennsylvania. Through PhD training, she has certificates in Experimental Ethnography and Archival Methodology.

melissa@activatestories.org