DANIELA KON LIEBERBERG | Founder + Executive Director
Daniela Kon Lieberberg is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, producer, and consultant with two decades of experience at the intersection of human rights, global development, and impact media. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, she studied film at La Fémis in Paris and NYU Tisch, earned a Bachelor’s degree in Media and Cultural Studies at the London College of Communications, and completed a Master’s in Documentary Production at Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2003, she moved to New York to work for Emmy award-winning director Marc Levin at Blowback Productions, where she served as a researcher and assistant editor for HBO and THINK Film’s Protocols of Zion, an official Berlinale and Sundance selection. In 2005, Daniela founded the impact agency DEEDA, working with filmmakers, NGOs, and aid organizations across Southeast Asia, West Africa, and the Middle East. Her work includes the award-winning documentary TALIBE, the United Nations FAO Ending Hunger Campaign, the UN Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD), and numerous collaborations with grassroots initiatives in education, voluntourism, food security, youth leadership, women’s empowerment, LGBT rights, water management, children’s rights, and modern-day slavery. Driven by the goal of maximizing responsible impact through creativity, Daniela founded SIMA and the Social Impact Media Awards in 2012, advancing the culture of impact filmmaking and supporting filmmakers and changemakers globally. Based in Los Angeles, she expanded SIMA’s operations into fiscal sponsorship and global impact distribution through SIMA Studios, reaching over 140,000 students and 5 million viewers in more than 100 countries. Today, SIMA is the largest network of social impact creatives with a vast and ever-expanding global footprint, leveraging the power of impact film to advance education and ignite social change from the grassroots level and up. Daniela also serves as an Adjunct Professor at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and is a Board Member of the Film and Women’s Rights Committee of Human Rights Watch.