Jody Santos, an associate professor of communications at Springfield College in Massachusetts won a Telly Award in the film/video category for her documentary No One Left Behind. The film highlights the work of Disability Rights International, a human rights organization that seeks to help adults and children with disabilities who are kept unnecessarily in orphanages or psychiatric facilities.
“This is one of the most heartbreaking stories I’ve ever had to tell,” said Santos, an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker who has been producing and directing documentaries for the Public Broadcasting System and several cable networks since 2000. “The suffering and abuse I witnessed in institutions in the Republic of Georgia and Mexico stays with me today and fueled my desire to make this film the best it can be. What we are talking about is an enormous waste of human potential, people languishing, essentially, in prisons because of the stigma of disabilities around the world.”
Santos is a graduate of Boston University, where she majored in English. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Northeastern University in Boston.
The Telly Awards honor the very best film and video productions, groundbreaking online video content, and outstanding local, regional, and cable television commercials and programs. This year the winners were selected from nearly 12,000 entries from all 50 states and five foreign countries.