Who We Are
We wanted to raise
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Dr. Roberta Hunte and Dawn Jones Redstone met while working at Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc., a non-profit that helps women access careers in construction—one of the few jobs that doesn’t require an expensive college degree and pays a living wage. As a journey-level carpenter and former member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, Dawn served as Training Manager while Roberta was a Career Counselor. Together, they served many women and, over and over, saw both the passion women have for working in the trades and the resistance that women and women of color face. During this time, in addition to teaching, Dawn made over thirty videos documenting the tradeswoman experience.
Roberta went on to write a dissertation on the experience of black tradeswomen titled “My Walk Has Never Been Average: Black Tradeswomen Negotiating Intersections of Race and Gender In Long Term Careers in The United States’ Building Trades.” Through her collaboration with Bonnie Ratner, the thesis was successfully turned into a well-received play by the same name. Meanwhile, Dawn went on to pursue filmmaking full time at Hearts+Sparks Productions. They stayed in touch over the years and in 2015, Dawn approached Roberta about the prospect of making a short film about the tradeswomen experience. Dawn Jones Redstone (Director, Executive Producer, Co-Writer Dawn Jones Redstone is an award-winning queer, Latinx writer/director whose films have screened around the globe. Her work often features women of color and explores themes of resistance, feminism and the internal machinations that help us transform into the people we want to become. She's the recipient of MRG Foundation’s Lilla Jewel Artist Award, was named Woman of Vision by Oregon Daily Journal of Commerce and has been awarded four grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council to date. She believes in using her writing/hiring decisions to help create a filmmaking community that reflects and brings new perspective to the world we live in. Before becoming a full time filmmaker, Dawn worked as a union carpenter and as training manager at Oregon Tradeswomen for a combined total of 15 years. She resides with her wife and daughter in Portland, Oregon. She is currently preparing to make her first feature film, COVID-allowing. Dr. Roberta Hunte (Executive Producer, Producer, Author of Inspiration for Film) is a facilitator, researcher, mother, and cultural worker. She is an Assistant Professor in Child, Youth and Family Studies at Portland State University and facilitates trainings on equity, diversity and inclusion. Roberta is a collaborator on the play We are BRAVE, My Walk Has Never Been Average, and the short film Sista in the Brotherhood, the latter two projects are informed by her research on Black tradeswomen. Her focus areas are women of color feminisms, equity and inclusion, and reproductive justice. |
