Our Team

Advisory Board Member

Vani Balgam

In 2013, Vani founded Dancing Atoms , LA-based content and creative development motion pictures production company. She is working on two preschool shows, one with a Canadian production company and the other with a Thai Company. She currently consults and advises people with art direction, character development and storytelling.

Vani has mentored over hundred Unreal artists and contributed as a creative producer for their Unreal short films during the Unreal Fellowship. She crafted a Women Creators Program in partnership with Epic Games that has created a lot of buzz around it.

Previously in her illustrious career, she was the founding director of Rhythm & Hues Studios, Asia & Head of Creative Management and Training at DreamWorks Animation, Shanghai.

Vani actively promotes community building all over the world. She is currently heading the Women in Animation India Collective and has been President of Asifa India for over two decades.

Advisory Board Member

Jo Meuris

Jo is an award-winning Dutch/Canadian/ Chinese/West Indian filmmaker from Canada. She holds an MFA in Film, Television, and Digital Media from University of California, Los Angeles, and a BFA in Animation from Concordia University.

An animator by trade, her work can be seen in well over a dozen National Film Board of Canada productions, where she worked for fifteen years as an animator, supervising animator, and lead compositor, and where she also directed two films of her own. 

In 2014, Jo moved to the United States and spent nine years building the new animation program at Nevada State College in Las Vegas, where she taught animation, editing, and drawing, before finally landing in Los Angeles where she currently lives and works, teaching animation at Loyola Marymount University.

Her most recent film, Aurora, was completed in 2020 and is independently produced. The film has screened at scores of festivals, is being distributed by the Animation Show of Shows, and was presented at San Diego Comic-Con International to an audience of 4500 in 2022.

Jo continues to develop new animated projects and in her spare time, goes adventuring, and fights dragons for fun…

Board Member

Leslie Ezeh

Leslie is the founder of Legends Animated and currently serves as one of its board members; she is also the Associate Director at ASIFA-Hollywood. Leslie enjoys supporting the animation community through both organizations, as well as by participating as a judge at animation festivals such as the Los Angeles Animation Festival and Kaboom Animation Festival.

Portrait created by Eunice Adeyi

Board member

Diana Teran

Diana has been a fan of the animation medium ever since she was a child. Her love for the art form continued to grow as the years went by and eventually inspired her to pursue it as a career. In 2019, she entered the animation industry as a Production Assistant for Netflix’s original show “Battle Kitty” and as a Character Coordinator for “Blue Eye Samurai”. She currently works as an Episodic coordinator for an unannounced preschool show at Wild Canary. Though she is on the production side; Diana sees this as an opportunity to grow within the industry and hopes to step into the creative side as a board artist. When she’s not working, Diana is seen often playing with her cats or playing video games. You can find her ramblings on Twitter

Board Member

Acacia Torres Rodarte

Acacia is living her dream of drawing for a living by creating commercial art sold at trade shows. Her love for all things art keeps her glued to the animation side of things , creating backgrounds and character designs for animation shorts. When ever possible, she takes workshops for added tutelage to keep her skills sharp and up to date within the industry. You can find some of her work over at www.acaciatrodarte.com