Directory Profile

Rachel Gandin Mark is SCA Director of International Programs where she oversees two U.S. State Department grant programs.  She is the Program Director of the American Film Showcase (AFS), the largest arts exchange program of the American government, and the Co-Principal Investigator of the newly launched Middle East Media Initiative, an innovative diplomacy program training TV writers and producers from across the Arab World.  She has overseen the day-to-day of the AFS grant since its inception in 2011, building the AFS team and significantly expanding the scope and reach of the program.  Previously, Rachel was the sole producer of Disney’s first Arabic-language feature, The United, released internationally in 2013, served for many years as Creative Consultant for the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab in Jordan, and founded the Arab Film Festival in Los Angeles.  She received an M.A. in Arabic from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, a B.A. in International Development from UCLA, and lived in Cairo, Egypt for many years. Rachel has spoken on film and TV diplomacy at the Paley Center for Media, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and at Comic-Con. Between 2012 and 2018, she traveled for work to China, Angola, South Africa, Burundi, Russia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Japan, Laos, Israel, Paraguay, Algeria, Egypt, Georgia, Canada, and Lithuania.