2015 Emmy Award winning producer and 2010 McKnight Filmmaking Fellow Dawn Mikkelson’s work has been seen on PBS, OUTtv, and Free Speech TV, and has screened at numerous international festivals including the Galway Film Fleadh, Cambridge Film Festival, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, DocuFest Atlanta, Leipzig DOK Market, American Indian Film Festival, Planet in Focus, and Washington DC Environmental Film Festival. Mikkelson has completed four award-winning independent feature documentaries, The Red Tail, Green Green Water, THIS obedience, and Treading Water: a documentary, which illuminate larger societal issues while creating understanding through the intimate stories of individuals.

A former television news reporter at an ABC affiliate, Mikkelson often speaks and writes on issues around documentary filmmaking and social justice for MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) and at festival panels, colleges, and universities. Mikkelson has taught Documentary Film as Adjunct Faculty at Ottawa University in Kansas, as well as at IFP Minnesota. In 2006 Mikkelson’s film, Hope for Recovery: Understanding Mental Illness (produced in collaboration with Twin Cities Public Television and NAMI-MN) won the Eric Sevareid Award by the Northwest Broadcast News Association (NBNA).