Former Sundance pageant director Tabitha Jackson has a brand-new gig, and it’s one near her coronary heart (and residential). Movie Discussion board and its Board of Administrators in the present day introduced that Jackson has been named director of Movie Discussion boardstarting Monday, February 23, 2026.
Per in the present day’s press launch, “Jackson is an trade veteran with over 30 years of expertise in unbiased and non-profit media, each within the U.S. and her native England. She joins Movie Discussion board energized by two years of analysis fellowships with MIT Open Documentary Lab, the Royal Shakespeare Firm, Harvard Kennedy Faculty’s Shorenstein Heart on Media, Politics, and Public Coverage; and a Rockefeller Basis residency; through which she thought-about each the present state of institutional belief, and mediated actuality and its implications for the documentary venture.”
Jackson’s resume is lengthy and eclectic, together with a background in researching, producing, and directing. At Channel4, the UK’s second public broadcaster, she served as a Commissioning Editor for Arts and Efficiency and Animation, and as an Govt Producer for Film4.
In 2013, she turned director of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Movie Program, “the place she oversaw non-fiction movie from growth to distribution, championing a whole bunch of documentary filmmakers, rising program funding, and implementing a extra expansive artist-driven institutional strategy to the artwork of nonfiction.”
In 2020, Jackson was named director of the Sundance Movie Pageant. In June 2022, two years after assuming the place after the departure of long-time pageant director John Cooper, Jackson stepped down from her function at Sundance. She had, fairly notably, led the pageant by way of two pandemic-era virtual-only festivals. In September 2022, IndieWire’s personal co-founder Eugene Hernandez took over the functionthe place he continues to at the present time.
Movie Discussion board has additionally been by way of some management adjustments in recent times. In January 2023, long-time head Karen Cooper stepped down after 51 years of steering the theater. She was succeeded by Sonya Chung, who took over the function in July 2023, and stepped down from the place on the finish of 2025, after two years.
The nationwide seek for Movie Discussion board’s subsequent director was led by a committee headed by Movie Discussion board Board Chair Grey Coleman (Companion, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP) and HR skilled Stella Strazdas (collectively, the manager committee of the board), facilitated by Edie Demas, Vice President, Organizational Technique and Brenna Thomas, Search Advisor, at TOC Arts Companions.
“After a search course of involving a lot of extraordinarily certified candidates, our board of administrators and employees rapidly reached a powerful consensus round Tabitha, and it’s no shock, given her ardour for movie and historical past of robust administration within the non-profit arts area,” stated Coleman in an official assertion. “Plus she is a longtime resident of Greenwich Village and has spent years attending screenings and occasions at Movie Discussion board.”
For Jackson, the transfer appears to be an excellent match certainly. “Unbiased nonprofit arthouse cinema’ — these 4 phrases distill all the pieces I’ve championed all through my profession. That additionally they describe Movie Discussion board, my native movie show, makes this appointment really feel like coming residence,” stated Jackson in her personal assertion. “For 56 years, Movie Discussion board has constructed a nationwide and worldwide repute for daring curation, unparalleled repertory programming, fiercely loyal audiences — and legendary banana bread. It’s an honor to step into the world constructed by my predecessors Karen Cooper and Sonya Chung, Creative Administrators Bruce Goldstein and Mike Maggiore, Managing Director Chad Bolton, and the remainder of the unbelievable Movie Discussion board employees and board, and a privilege to guide this very important house into its subsequent chapter. As a result of Movie Discussion board is the place artwork turns into civic life — the place a movie can begin a debate, remodel the best way we see, or just remind us we’re not alone at nighttime.”
Jackson has gained quite a few awards, together with an Emmy Award for her producing work, the Main Mild Award on the DOC NYC Visionaries Tribute in 2018, and was offered with the Trustees Award by the Grierson Belief in 2021. She is a voting member of the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences and served three phrases on the Documentary Department Govt Committee.