Ellen Windemuth
Ellen is the founder of WaterBear, a free interactive streaming and social media platform dedicated to the future of our planet where you can enjoy award-winning documentaries, enlightening short films and impactful series. WaterBear curates and produces stories around the 17 UN Development Goals with an emphasis on climate, equality, biodiversity, community and regeneration.
Prior to WaterBear, Ellen was owner and CEO of Off the Fence, having founded the company in 1994. Under her leadership, Off the Fence acquired, produced, and co-produced over 6,000 hours of content. Ellen is a seasoned Executive Producer and Distributor and has produced over 500 hours to date, including My Octopus Teacher, which won a BAFTA and Oscar for Best Feature Documentary.
Ellen is also the Chair Emeritus of the Jackson Wild Festival Board in Jackson Hole, which she worked for for 16 years, and is on the Advisory Board of the Sunnyside of the Doc festival in La Rochelle, France. Ellen is currently the Executive Producer for several feature docs in the Impact Documentary genre. She was the first woman to receive UK festival Wildscreen’s Christopher Parson’s Outstanding Achievement Awards 2018. Recipients for this award include David Attenborough and the Founder of the WWF, Sir Peter Scott.
Ellen moved to Maine with her husband Erik Meijer in the spring of 2024, has three grown children and dedicates her time to her films and bead design work. Her bead work focuses on talismanic and ancient objects which are wearable by men and women of all generations. Her objective is for the pieces to be a living reminder of ancient art's sophistication, and the ability of ancient civilizations to encourage the acceptance of multiple religions, ethnic groups and divergent cultures. Her current work encompasses the ancient Persian Empires, notably the Achaemenids and Sassanians who were strongly motivated by Zoroastrian beliefs and values.
Born from an American mother and a German father, she spent her early school days in Germany and the UK, and graduated from Brown University in 1984, after which she studied Cinema Studies at NYU. She lived and worked in New York for ten years, after which she moved to Amsterdam.