Founder & Sponsors

Kevin Nolting is an award-winning film editor who has been working in film and digital cutting rooms for over 37 years. After serving an apprenticeship in Hollywood with iconic film editors like Robert C. Jones and Richard Chew, he’s spent the last 22 years at Pixar Animation Studios, where he edited the Academy Award-winning films Up, Inside Out and Soul and contributed to many others, including Finding Nemo and WALL-E. He also directed the short film '22 vs. Earth’ for Disney+. Kevin currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife Diane (UCSC alumna, Porter College, 1978), just a short bike ride from their two daughters and two grandchildren, and is working on independent live-action films while continuing to mentor and consult at Pixar.

Ron Yerxa attended Stanford from 1965 to 1970 but spent much of that time driving over the hill to UC Santa Cruz. After a couple years of teaching in various jobs he returned to UCSC as a graduate student in1972 - that’s when he met Harry Chotiner.

In 1976 he moved to LA intending to work in film and eventually found jobs with various film companies.  

In 1992, Ron Yerxa formed Bona Fide Productions with Albert Berger.  Their producing credits include King of the Hill, Election, Cold Mountain, Little Children, and Best Picture Academy Award Nominees Little Miss Sunshine and Nebraska.  

More recently they produced The Peanut Butter Falcon, Blow the Man Down, The Last Shift, and Somewhere in Queens, released last year. They have also executive produced documentaries on Wilco and Levon Helm. On the HBO series The Leftovers they were co-executive producers.

“I was born and raised in West Los Angeles- in an upper-middle class Jewish culture that included the world of Hollywood. Wesleyan University, then a year of Rabbinical School, dropped out, and then a doctorate in history from UCSC. Three years as an editor and manager of Socialist Review magazine, burned out on left politics, and then different jobs in the film industry- everything from a reader for Coppola's Zoetrope studio to a VP of development at 20th Century Fox and Interscope. Then a history teacher at an Oakland high school, and now teach adult ed. film classes at NYU and UC Berkeley. Married to a wonderful human rights lawyer and have three kids and five grandkids.”