What's in a name?

The Pale Blue Dot image was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990 from 6 billion km away, as per Carl Sagan's request. The photo points back toward Earth through Saturn's rings and shows our planet as a tiny blue dot in the top-most ring. This unique perspective throws light upon the frailty and sacredness of the Earth, and highlights the importance of treasuring the only things we have that actually matter. Everyone we have ever loved and will ever love, every memory, every laugh, every birth and death and work of art and chapter of history and discovery---all exist only on that tiny little dot.

The goal of Pale Blue Dot Media is to bring a little bit of that larger perspective into every story we tell.

Who is PBD?

Deia Schlosberg [she/they] - Director, Producer, Founder

Deia made national news in October, 2016, when she was arrested and charged with 45 years' worth of felonies for filming the #ShutItDown pipeline protest in North Dakota. Deia is currently directing the docuseries BOOTSTRAPS, which follows eleven households for two and a half years while each individual receives a basic income as part of a groundbreaking UBI experiment. Deia’s directorial debut, THE STORY OF PLASTIC (Mill Valley/Discovery) won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Documentary in 2021. Previously, Deia produced Josh Fox's climate change film, HOW TO LET GO OF THE WORLD... (2016, Sundance/HBO), and co-produced AWAKE, A DREAM FROM STANDING ROCK (2017, Tribeca/Netflix), and THE RELUCTANT RADICAL (2018, PBS, dir. Lindsey Grayzel). Deia earned an MFA in Science & Natural History Filmmaking at Montana State University in Bozeman, where she directed and produced BACKYARD, which looks at the human cost of fracking and won two student Emmys. She was named one of DOC NYC's 40 under 40 in 2019, and a Film Independent Fellow in 2021. Deia's background is in Earth science and visual communications, as well as expeditioning, having been awarded a 2009 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year award for a two-year, 7800-mile through-hike of the Andes Mountains.

Vanessa Bergonzoli [she/her] - Producer (BOOTSTRAPS)

Vanessa Bergonzoli is a multicultural, award-winning filmmaker, experienced in all stages of production for film, TV, news media, and contemporary art. She is a multilingual communicator who promotes cross-cultural awareness in her everyday practice. Her work as a producer garnered significant award recognition including the viral, CLIO-winning commercial SELFIE (2014) for Dove; the HBO, Academy Award-nominated documentary MONDAYS AT RACINE (2013), and the Emmy® Award-winning Sesame Street special GROWING HOPE AGAINST HUNGER (2012). Committed to bringing stories of the underdog to the big screen, her follow-up documentary OUR OWN HOUSE (2020) addresses the growing plastic pollution in remote areas of Belize. Her directorial career has also expanded to directing commercials, TV broadcast award shows and music videos. Vanessa’s dynamic filmmaking style stems from training in theater traditions as a puppeteer and thespian.

Conrad Shaw [he/him] - Co-Creator (BOOTSTRAPS)

Conrad Shaw is a researcher, producer, writer, and activist in the Universal Basic Income (UBI) space. A mechanical engineer turned filmmaker, in 2016 he launched into full-time UBI work when he teamed up with his now wife and partner Deia Schlosberg on a docuseries project called Bootstraps, for which he designed and managed the Bootstraps Basic Income Experiment - delivering basic incomes of $1K/month to 22 Americans across 10 states for 2.5 years - and field-produced for the film production side of the project. Conrad also created the UBIcalculator as a tool for the movement, wrote a couple dozen essays on different facets of UBI, and in 2020 became a co-founder of Comingle, a startup company building a next gen mutual aid platform designed along basic income principles. 

Contact

deia@palebluedotmedia.com

conrad@comingle.us