What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid to Fail?

The Empowerment Project Film Comes to Stony Brook March 26

In 2012 Emmy-award winning documentary filmmakers and producers Dana Cook and Sarah Moshman asked themselves, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid to fail?” The answer was simple — make a feature documentary with an all-female film crew about inspirational women throughout the country. They called it The Empowerment Project: Ordinary Women Doing Extraordinary Things, and the film will be shown at Stony Brook University on Thursday, March 26, from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm at the Charles B. Wang Center Theater, with a panel discussion to follow. Online registration is free but required.

The Empowerment Project follows five female filmmakers that journeyed across America to encourage, empower and inspire the next generation of strong women to go after their career ambitions. The film is not about encouraging girls to try to “have it all” but to be leaders of their lives and go after their dreams without fear and in a realistic way. It’s also a story of friendship and transformation, as they turned the cameras on themselves to capture the journey to re-define empowerment as they drove more than 7,000 miles within one month from Los Angeles to New York City.

Nancy Franklin and Anne Moyer from Stony Brook’s Department of Psychology will facilitate the panel discussion following the screening. They will be joined by Dana Cook and Sarah Moshman, and panelists from Stony Brook University:

Morgan DiCarlo, Undergraduate Civil Engineering Student; Member of Women in Science and Engineering (WISE); ASCE National New Face of Civil Engineering 2015 Collegiate

Evonne Kaplan-Liss, MD, MPH, FAAP, Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine, Program in Public Health, School of Journalism, and Pediatrics; Director, Pediatric Environmental Center of Excellence; Steering Committee, Alda Center for Communicating Science

Laurie T. Krug, PhD, Assistant Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology and Stony Brook Discovery Prize Fellow

Anna Lubitz, Graduate Student, Program in Public Health and MBA program; MBA Association President; Former Undergraduate Student Government President

Allison J. McLarty, MD, Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery; Associate Program Director, General Surgery; Surgical Director, Left Ventricular Assist Device Program