Since then, Whiteman has worked with thousands of writers, directors, producers, professional actors, technicians, subject matter experts, and executives. She has become a respected screen industry leader, sought-after mentor, coach, consultant, and moderator. Her master classes, workshops and talks across Canada, New Zealand, and at the Rohovot Women’s Film Festival, Israel have attracted sold out audiences. Through WIDC, Whiteman has directly and indirectly supported the production of hundreds of screen projects that have entertained millions of audiences globally. Changing the face of Canada’s media arts sector with her passion for creating space for authentic creative voices to thrive, Whiteman has been recognized by two Governor General’s award nominations, multiple awards for promoting gender equity and inclusion in Canada’s screen industry, including the 2024 Outstanding Achievement Leo Award.
Canada’s longest running professional development offering specially designed for women and non-binary directors and writer/directors of screen fiction, through Whiteman’s leadership WIDC has helped propel the careers of some of Canada’s most successful women and gender diverse filmmakers, from Order of Canada recipients like Veronica Tennant C.M., Dr. Shirley Cheechoo C.M., and Dr. Rita Shelton Deverell C.M., to more recent alumni like Jordan Canning (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Fraggle Rock), Marie Clements (Bones of Crows, Red Snow), Sonia Bonspille Boileau (Pour toi, Flora, Rustic Oracle), Siobhan Devine (The Birdwatcher, Reginald the Vampire), as well as Kim Albright, Laura Adkin, Wendy Ord, and more.
Carol Whiteman has executive produced screen projects that have entertained millions of audiences globally including multiple award-winning feature films including:
2010 – Lucille’s Ball (dir. Lulu Keating – Leo nominations & Awards)
2014 – The Birdwatcher (dir. Siobhan Devine – Leo nominations & Awards)
2015 – Never Steady, Never Still (dir. Kathleen Hepburn – Leo nominations & Awards)
2016 – Suck It Up (dir. Jordan Canning)
2019 – Red Snow (dir. Marie Clements – Leo nominations & Awards)
2019 – Rustic Oracle (dir. Sonia Bonspille Boileau – Leo nominations & Awards)
2019 – Queen of the Morning Calm (dir. Gloria Ui Young Kim)
2021 – Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor (dir. Shelley Thompson)
2023 – With Love and a Major Organ (dir. Kim Albright – Leo nominations & Awards pending*)
2024 – Monica’s News (dir. Pamela Gallant)
2024 – Celestine (dir. Susanne Serres, in post production)
Upcoming – The Words We Can’t Speak (dir. Lindsay McIntyre, in polish & package)
Upcoming – After Love (dir. Marjan Hashemi, in production)
She has also directly supported the production and completion of awarding-winning screen projects including:
Feature Films:
2009 – Amazon Falls (dir. Katrin Bowen)
2012 – Sitting on the Edge of Marlene (dir. Ana Valine – Leo nominations & Awards)
2015 – Two4One (dir. Maureen Bradley – Leo nominations & Awards)
2019 – Box of Freedom (dir. Adelina Suvagau)
2021 – Be Still (dir. Elizabeth Lazebnik – Leo nominations & Awards)
2024 – Banned – (dir. Reem Morsi, out to festivals)
Upcoming – Send the Rain (dir. Hayley Gray, Kaayla Whachell)
Upcoming – Human Nature (dir. Luvia Petersen)
Upcoming – Hummingbird (dir. Giselle Miller)
Upcoming – Dormant (dir. Jenny Lee-Gilmore)
Web Series:
2019 – NarcoLeap (dir. Kate Green)
2020 – Tokens On Call (dir. Winnifred Jong)
2022 – The Communist’s Daughter (dir. Leah Cameron)
2024 – Best Friend Me (dir. Ana de Lara, in post)
From 2007 to 2010, in collaboration with Jan Nathanson (IFF at TIFF), Whiteman produced Telefilm Canada’s Feature It! Program that developed over 50 English language feature film projects in Quebec. Some titles coming from that program include Cousin Eddie, (dir. Boris Rodriguez); Rhymes for Young Ghouls (dir. Jeff Barnaby), among others.
Recognizing the impacts of the pandemic on mental health and hearing from WIDC alumni about the stressors and challenges faced, especially those working in ultra-low budget production, in 2023, Whiteman spear-headed a team of professionals from production, mental health and adult education to create the WIDC Safer Creative Spaces (SCS) project. Funded with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, and the aim of the project is to disrupt stigma and provide practical, cost-free tools for leaders, cast and crew to address concerning mental health gaps in the media arts sector. After over 15,000 hours of research, proto-typing and beta-testing, the WIDC SCS Wellness Starter Kit, Resource Network, and Recommendations was launched in June 2024.
Whiteman holds a BFA with Honours from York University’s Theatre Performance program and is a graduate of the Alliance Atlantis Banff Television Executive Program. She is a member of a variety of industry organizations, including ACTRA/UBCP, Canadian Actors Equity Association (CAEA), the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, (ACCT), and Women In Film where she is a member of the Alberta, Atlantic and Toronto Chapters and a Life Member of GEMS Vancouver. She has served on dozens of industry related committees and advisory boards, including the BC Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Advisory Board (the Leos), ACTRA National Women’s Committee, Female Eye Film Festival, Langara College Film Arts, and Screen BC’s Education and Training Committee. She is a co-chair of the Motion Picture Industry Orientation (MPIO) course task force that recently re-launched an updated edition with a new emphasis on Equitable, Diverse and Inclusive working spaces in the BC Screen Industry. In 2023, she completed the Artistic Mental Health Practioner training offered by the US-based Association of Mental Health Coordinators.
In 2019, Whiteman completed her Doctors degree in Transformational Change in the faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Her thesis contextualizes the appreciative approach used in co-creating and delivering the WIDC for over two decades, what has been learned, and asks the question what might be next.
WIDC ORIGINS – Carol Whiteman
Excerpted from Whiteman’s Doctoral Thesis
Creating Space for Authentic Voice In Canada’s Screen Industry: A Case Study of Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC)
January 2019In 1994, the ACTRA BC women’s (WABC) committee began conducting a series of inspirational panel discussions to highlight the career paths of successful women in the screen industry. At the final panel discussion session, the WABC committee asked our audience what they would like us to do next. A simple reductive sorting exercise was undertaken. Key topics were identified. The audience were given three stickers each and asked to place a sticker beside the topics they felt were most important. We then distilled all the votes into super headings that included: more roles for women, leadership training, develop more scripts with better roles for women, reach out globally – make noise.
After performing a simple open coding process, it was clear to us, as we had suspected, that our audience, primarily made up of female performers, wanted more opportunities to be full participants in the screen industry community. They wanted more work opportunities. They wanted to develop professionally. They wanted whatever we offered next to be high profile and practical. They wanted it to be about ‘leveling the playing field’ and they didn’t want it to be negative, not about bashing men.
When the reporting out was completed, and the meeting was wrapping up, then president of Vancouver Women In Film and Video (later renamed Women In Film and Television Vancouver (WIFTV)), Michelle Bjornson came up to me and introduced herself. She suggested that WIFTV would be very interested in collaborating with our WABC committee. Bjornson’s outreach presented a welcomed opportunity, and we kept the lines of communications open, however at that time our committee was focused on the lot of our members: women performers.
Inspired by the feedback and our encouraging experiences with the panel discussions, our committee decided to do another brainstorm around the idea of creating more and better roles for women. “Let’s go straight to the source,” someone suggested. By going to the source of the power behind movie making we deduced that we would be more apt to influence actual change. Who would be on the top of the food chain of power in the screen industry, we asked ourselves. We reasoned that the voice that generates the story certainly held power. From the actor’s perspective we naively thought that the most powerful voice in movie making was that of the screenwriter – the storyteller who creates the characters in the stories told on screen.
What if we brought in a cracker-jack woman screenwriter to do a master class for women? The idea of mentorship came from Daphne Goldrick who had become our group’s elder after Gamley’s departure. Goldrick had been at the vanguard of the women’s movement in Canadian theatre representing Canada and women performers at international conferences through the 1980’s. She proposed the idea in her usual infectiously enthusiastic way. It seemed brilliant! We could workshop scripts with ACTRA actors. To attract the most attention, we would need to aim big. We needed a platform on a world stage. It could be held at Banff Television Festival suggested Goldrick (D. Goldrick, personal communication, April 1995).
Having begun as an intimate gathering of screen industry professionals meeting in the Rocky Mountain retreat town of Banff, Alberta in 1979, by the 1990’s the Banff Television Festival (now known as the Banff World Media Festival (BANFF)) had become a focal point attracting screen industry decision-makers from around the globe (Banff World Media Festival, 2018).
In June 1994, I was sent to attend BANFF as our women’s committee envoy and representing the ACTRA BC council. I was to test the waters and the feasibility of our scheme. I was to poll content creators and decision-makers, in particular women: Is there a problem for women participating in the industry? If so, what is it? What do you think would help? Shortly thereafter, Daphne Goldrick and I drafted a proposal to create a female storyteller master class to be delivered at BANFF. The proposal was circulated to potential collaborators and sponsors, including Bjornson at WIFTV (C. Whiteman, personal field notes, 1995).
Sharing the call: gaining allies
In 1995, the WIFTV board of directors changed and Mary Ungerleider succeeded Michele Bjornson as WIFTV president. In her new role, Ungerleider attended a Women In Film-related symposium in Regina, Saskatchewan where she met Sara Diamond, then Executive Artistic Director of Media and Visual Arts at the Banff Centre for the Arts (Banff Centre). According to Ungerleider and Diamond, during a dynamic encounter at the symposium, that apocryphally included martinis or some form of cocktails, they and several other women were discussing the lack of opportunities for mid-career women directors to advance their skills, their stories and their careers, particularly amid rumblings about the closure of Studio D, the highly successful first of its kind women’s unit at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). At that gathering, according to her report to me at the time which Diamond later confirmed, Ungerleider spoke about the WABC and our desire to gather together collaborators to support our proposal to mentor women storytellers (M. Ungerleider, personal communication, 1995; S. Diamond, personal communication, 1995).
Seizing the moment at the symposium, Diamond pitched an idea to a representative from a federal governmental funding body, the Human Resources Skills Development Council (HRSDC) who was also present at the symposium. The idea was to provide funding for an initiative that would target master-level training for mid-career women directors while working with professional ACTRA actors (S. Diamond, personal communication, 1995). The HRSDC granted the Banff Centre a few thousand dollars towards delivering such a workshop at the Banff Centre. The collaboration among the Banff Centre, ACTRA and WIFTV was soon hatched and the Women In the Director’s Chair workshop was born.