Board of Directors

Danette Wolpert Holman is the Founder, President and Board Chair of the ILLUMINATE Film Festival. As a visionary, entrepreneur and thought leader in the field of transformational media, her focus is on unlocking global human potential by inspiring positive change from within.
Danette served for a decade as ILLUMINATE’s founding Executive Director, establishing the festival as the country’s premier destination event for conscious film, launching its global streaming platform and expanding its audiences into 99 countries. She also founded ILLUMINATE’s Conscious Film Convergence, the world’s first annual gathering of transformational film creators, producers, distributors, funders and marketers, dedicated to collectively enhancing the quality, quantity, accessibility and impact of conscious media.

Prior to founding ILLUMINATE in 2014, Danette spent 5 years as Associate Director of the Miami International Film Festival and held positions as Director of the Washington DC-based Screening Room and Manager of the Washington Jewish Film Festival.

Before festival life, Danette was a Senior Management Consultant for Ernst & Young where she provided financial, management and technology solutions for Fortune 500 clients across the country. She studied business, engineering and organizational behavior, and holds degrees in Management and Information Systems from the University of Virginia.
Danette has focused her energy on elevating consciousness and catalyzing personal, community and planetary change, including as a Holomovement founding steward, Sedona Cultural Collaborative board member, and graduate of Mindful NYU’s InnerMBA program. She is the recipient of the National Association for Women Business Owners Visionary Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence.

Paola di Florio is an Oscar and Emmy-nominated director, writer, producer and Sundance Jury Prize-nominee. An NYU graduate, she’s the founder of Counterpoint films—a vanguard in the conscious media space, following the launch of top grossing documentary Awake: The Life of Yogananda. Her company’s mission is to create experiences through storytelling which awaken the human spirit. Di Florio’s work has received special screenings at the U.S. Congress and the British House of Lords, and has been distributed throughout the world, both theatrically as well as on Netflix, HBO, CNN, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS, and more. The New York Times described her work as “extraordinary” and “poignant.” The Los Angeles Times found it “deeply affecting, revelatory [and] gripping;” The Hollywood Reporter said that it “should be required viewing for all Americans.” Di Florio has guest-lectured at UCLA, UCS, Stanford and Berkeley. She is a Kriya Yoga practitioner and has been certified in vinyasa yoga, kundalini, and also in Pranic healing. She is the proud mother of two young men.