2024 Wavemaker Honorees

Gale Anne Hurd

2024 Wavemaker Honoree

Gale Anne Hurd is a multi-award-winning producer and the founder of Valhalla Entertainment, most recently known for the global cultural phenomenon, Emmy®-winning and record shattering TV series, The Walking Dead, and its multiple spin-offs, including Fear the Walking Dead, Dead City, Daryl Dixon, and the upcoming The Ones Who Live, among others. Hurd’s feature, The YouTube Effect, is an eye-opening documentary, directed by Alex Winter, which presents a thoughtful, troubling look at YouTube, a site with humble origins that has gone on to change how we experience the world. The film premiered at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival and was released in the US theatrically by Alamo Drafthouse Films. Her additional producing credits include Mankiller, an award- winning documentary on the late Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to be elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, as well as Sundance Audience Award winner The Waterdance, and such iconic classic feature films as Aliens, The Abyss, Armageddon, Tremors, Alien Nation, The Ghost and the Darkness, The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day -- which was recently added to the National Film Registry by the US Library of Congress.

Additionally, Hurd is a highly sought-after speaker on such topics as the status of the entertainment industry and gender equality. She has spoken at the Berlin, Deauville, Locarno and Toronto Film Festivals, the Milken Global Summit Conference and countless other programs worldwide. She has been featured on numerous podcasts, including “WTF with Marc Maron” and Deadline’s “Strike Talk.” Hurd’s prestigious honors include the 2022 Locarno Film Festival’s Best Independent Producer Award, the Cartier Award from the Deauville American Film Festival, Women in Film’s Crystal Award, the Producer’s Guild’s David O. Selznick Best Feature Film Producer Award, the Visual Effects Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award and, most recently, the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Online Film Critics Association.

Valerie Red-Horse Mohl

2024 Wavemaker Honoree

A filmmaker of Cherokee ancestry, Valerie Red-Horse Mohl’s body of work spans over three decades of film and television content creation and production. A graduate of UCLA’s Theater/Film Program, she has produced, directed and written over a dozen award winning films and television programs including, Mankiller, Naturally Native (Sundance Feature), True Whispers: The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers (PBS-also with Valhalla/Hurd), Choctaw Code Talkers (PBS-also with Valhalla/Hurd), Pop Hunter’s Dew Drop Inn (PBS), Diversity in the Delta (PBS), My Indian Summer (CBS) and Beauty (NBC).  Red-Horse Mohl is a member of the Directors Guild and Screen Actors Guild and was inducted into the NAWBO (National Association of Women Business Owners) Hall of Fame in 2008 and in 2022 was recognized as one of the Most Influential Women in the Bay Area of California. In addition to her entertainment expertise, Ms. Red-Horse Mohl is the CEO and founder of  Red-Horse Financial Group, Inc.; she holds ten FINRA securities licenses and has raised/structured over $4 billion in capital primarily for Native American Tribal Nations.   She is an appointee by Secretary Janet Yellen to the U.S. Treasury Advisory Committee on Racial Equity, the Board Chair of Boys & Girls Clubs -Native Services, and is both a lecturer and Board Chair at Stanford University within the Center for the Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.