EXPERIENCE
INTEGRITY
LEADERSHIP
THE COLLECTIVE
Susan Randall has over 25 years experience working as an investigator and mitigation specialist in Vermont and all over the U.S. and world. She participated in the ACLU’s Scharlette Holdman Mitigation Mentoring Program in 2022 and is a beloved member of the larger mitigation & defense investigation community. She is a licensed investigator in VT & NY and runs VTPrivateye, LLC in Vermont, where she maintains a staff of investigators and college interns. Before becoming an investigator, Susan worked as a journalist & then a documentary filmmaker in New York City. She worked as an associate producer for A&E, BBC, and as a freelance producer. She filed many investigative radio stories for NPR. She loves storytelling and enjoys the work of changing the narrative. She brings a wealth of production & investigation experience to creating mitigation films, and has trained folks in-house and at trainings all over the country. You may learn more out about Susan at https://www.vtprivateye.com/
Katie Carter is a fact investigator, mitigation specialist, and sentencing filmmaker with 18 years of experience. She has worked at the Orleans Public Defender, the Capital Defense Project of Southeast Louisiana, and the Federal Public Defender of Southeast Louisiana. She has created mitigation films since 2015, when she met Doug Passon. For the last five years, she has been in private practice in New York, primarily contracting on Federal Public Defender CJA cases in SDNY and EDNY. She has conducted trainings and taught at national conferences and in college settings around the country. She has collaborated with non-profits, academia, artists, designers, writers, researchers, and community gardeners to find collaborative ways to advocate for her clients. In 2024, she self-published a book called Holistic Defense: A Practice, which is a profound look at how we can re-frame investigation and mitigation practice as a healing modality for our clients as well as ourselves. “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” – Lilla Watson. You may learn more about Katie at https://www.carterinvestigations.com.
Doug Passon is a practicing attorney with almost 30 years of experience creating and teaching mitigation filmmaking and storytelling. He was named by the Wall Street Journal as a pioneer in the field, and he is widely recognized as the leading expert in mitigation film. Doug often contributes articles to The Champion, hosts a podcast called Set for Sentencing, and he co authored a book called The Narrative Gym For Law with Randy Olson. Doug is one of premiere attorneys in the U.S. leading the effort to educate and create awareness on the nuances of representing neurodivergent clients. A former federal public defender in Phoenix, Doug has trained more people, made more films, and created more content about mitigation film than anyone else in the world. You may learn more about Doug at https://dougpassonlaw.com/.
Noah Friedman-Rudovsky is a visual journalist, documentary filmmaker and mitigation specialist. As a journalist, Noah spent 15 years based in Latin America. He was a frequent contributor to the New York Times’ photo and video coverage in the region, and worked for NGO’s such as UNICEF, Oxfam and the Carter Center. He spent 2 years as the official photographer to Bolivia’s first indigenous President, Evo Morales, and is currently producing a feature-length documentary about Morales and social change in Bolivia. Based in Brooklyn, Noah now works primarily as a mitigation specialist. He focuses on life history investigations for immigrant defendants from Central America. Whenever possible he uses video and film to tell the stories of his clients. You can learn more about Noah at https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-friedman-rudovsky-b0731738