Changemakers
Changemakers documentary Series
In collaboration with Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Sam has directed a number of short documentaries across the United States, highlighting the incredible work of various Stanford GSB alumni and how they strive to make an impact through their work.
Director and cinematographer: Sam Shimizu-Jones - Editor: Misha Scott
Synopsis: "It was food that brought us together every evening," recalls Kate Rogers Mery de Bellegarde, MSx ’21, reflecting on her childhood in a family of seven siblings. Those memories sitting around the dinner table laid the foundation for her belief in "the healing power, the magic, and the community of food."
That belief is the driving force behind Sprouts Chef Training, a nonprofit empowering youth to lead successful lives by teaching them how to cook alongside chefs at restaurants across the San Francisco Bay Area. "We take a young adult who [is] struggling, and the goal is that they learn everything they need to know to land their very first job in the restaurant industry and to stabilize,” Kate says.
Kate’s inspiration to start Sprouts came from her brother's turbulent experiences as he was growing up. "One of my siblings was really struggling with emotional and legal matters,” she says. “For him, it was structure and a job that really helped that transition from struggling and difficulty to thriving and excelling." As Sprouts’ founder and executive director, Kate aims to help other vulnerable young people forge that same pathway to opportunity.
In the MSx program at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Kate expanded her vision, exploring how Sprouts’s programs could achieve impact beyond the local level. "The MSx program helped me understand my potential and how I can… take this to the thousands, to one day, the millions,” she says.
Within a decade, Kate hopes to see Sprouts expand to major cities nationwide, uniting chefs, donors, and programs serving young people. "We have an incredibly simple, sustainable model,” she says. “When you have all of these partners together, you have a win-win for everyone involved."
Director: Sam Shimizu-Jones - Cinematographer: William Carnahan- Editor: Misha Scott
Synopsis: The cofounder story of Maite Diez-Canedo, MBA ’17, and Itziar Diez-Canedo, MS ’17, starts at home. Instead of a lemonade stand, the seven and five-year-old sold books outside their home. “Hearing 10 rejections before lunch and just picking back up and trying to sell again. That’s a core memory,” Itziar says.
The two sisters kept working together, and studying together, both enrolling at Stanford GSB. Itziar came from a background in Fintech, and Maite in investment banking. “Being at the GSB together got us to truly think about what it would be like to start something together,” Maite says. “Not only did we think of the idea for Via, but also we tested our own co-founder dynamic.”
Via, which means bridge, is a company that aims to make the hiring process easier for remote workers, and their employers, across the globe. Although remote work is now standard, the women say contracts and hiring processes, work visas, and training programs aren’t set up for this new landscape. Via aims to change that.
“Hiring internationally is really complex, so what we’re doing is basically making it really simple. Our mission at Via is enabling any company to be a global organization,” Itziar says.
Director: Sam Shimizu-Jones - Cinematographer: William Carnahan- Editor: Misha Scott
Synopsis: Health care is a basic human right, say Meghan Hunter, MBA ’22, and Mary Ellen Luck, MBA ’22. That’s why together, they’re helping formerly incarcerated people access the care they need.
After graduating from Stanford Graduate School of Business, Hunter and Luck made their way to Montgomery, Alabama, to join the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization founded by public interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson that’s dedicated to addressing issues of racial and economic injustice. Drawn by EJI’s mission, the two would soon be helping expand the nonprofit’s services beyond the legal domain — and into health care.
“Our lawyers saw firsthand, through their clients, the challenges in terms of trying to access basic health care services,” Luck says. Alabama did not have anything like a free clinic offering treatment to former prisoners, who are often unemployed and uninsured.. “So I got to work on a lot of the research,” Hunter recalls. She started asking, “If we were to do something in health care, what might be possible? What could this look like?”
The answer to that question is EJI Health, a walk-in clinic in Montgomery, and a mobile clinic that travels around the state. Both offer free health care to anyone who’s recently been released from jail or prison. “Part of what we're trying to do is rebuild trust in health care,” Luck says. “I hope we’re showing that it is possible to provide high-quality, warm, high-touch care and lower the barrier to entry for groups that historically have not had access.”
For both Luck and Hunter, their work is about more than just health care. “Health is essential for us being able to access all of our other basic human rights,” Hunter says. “It's a privilege for us for our patients to trust us — that continues to fuel why I do what I do.”
Director: Sam Shimizu-Jones - Cinematographer: William Carnahan- Editor: Jack li
Synopsis: “I’m a nerd, and this is a major theme of the story: I built a spreadsheet and the spreadsheet was like, ‘What are the pros of brain surgery, and what are the cons of brain surgery?’”
Carrie Siu Butt, MBA ’04, would not call dystonia, a neurological movement disorder she was diagnosed with at age 11, a setback. When she got tremors in her right hand, she taught herself to write with her left.
“Overcoming obstacles is just something that I’m used to,” Siu Butt says. Relearning her world was just another goal to achieve.
After graduating from Stanford GSB, working on Wall Street, getting brain surgery, and finishing the New York City marathon, it was time to conquer her next goal: running a company. In 2020, Siu Butt became the CEO of SimpleHeath, an organization that offers easy access to birth control.
One of the things I'd always said to myself is, “When I grow up and [become] a great CEO, I’m really going to try and create a company where the employee workforce matches the patient or the consumer base.… We don’t do this by checking boxes,” Siubutt says. “We truly do it by attracting the right talent.”
Finding strength in a team is something Siu Butt says she learned at Stanford. "I had a great bunch of classmates that never made me feel different, never made me feel disabled. You really are a product of your tribe, and I think that the GSB, above everything else, is a great tribe.”
Director & Cinematographer: Sam Shimizu-Jones - Editor: Misha Scott
Synopsis: “Soul Train got society to see Black people as they really are — people just being their beautiful, authentic, no-holds-barred, this-is-what-I-am and this-is-what-I-do [selves].”
Since he was a kid, Richard Gay, MBA ’95, loved watching Soul Train, the iconic TV program that brought Black music and culture to millions of viewers for nearly four decades. The show’s last episode aired in 2006. Yet Gay has felt that the Soul Train has yet to reach its terminus — which is why he’s embarked on a mission to revitalize the show as a full-blown theatrical production.
As founder and CEO of 5Pack Entertainment, Gay is the lead partner and producer of Hippest Trip — The Soul Train Musical, a new stage show that first brought the magic of Soul Train to audiences in San Francisco before heading to Broadway. Reflecting on the production process, Gay says the music, writing, choreography, lighting, and staging have come together to create something “really, really special. All of a sudden, this magic happens.”
With one foot in the creative and the other in the business, Gay says making a splash is critical to ensuring Soul Train’s legacy — and he’s tapped what he calls “one of the most diverse investor pools in the history of Broadway” to make it happen. “Me and my partners feel it's our responsibility to get the story out… and we can't do that if it's not commercially viable,” he says. “You get very few times in life when you have something that can have that broad of an impact. It's an important work.”