Staff & Board

Lyda Kuth

Executive Director

Lyda is a founding board member and current Executive Director of the LEF Foundation. She has been recognized by the Massachusetts Cultural Council with the prestigious Commonwealth Award and honored by Women in Film and Video New England with the Image Award for Vision & Excellence in the media arts. She is a board member of Creative Capital and IndieCollect. In addition to her philanthropic work, she is also an independent filmmaker. In 2011, she had her debut as director/producer with her film, Love and Other Anxieties; and served as executive producer for Secundaria, with director Mary Jane Doherty, which premiered in 2013.

Genevieve Carmel

Program Director

Gen joined the LEF Foundation as Program Assistant in 2013, and served as Program Officer from 2016-2021. She now works as Program Director on behalf of the LEF Moving Image Fund, helping filmmakers to navigate the application process, facilitating the peer-reviewed grant-making process, and leading efforts to evaluate and improve all of LEF’s artist programs. Born in Boston to an American mother and a Haitian father, Gen grew up in Cambridge, MA, before earning her B.A. in Social Anthropology from Harvard College and spending three years in Beijing where she first gained experience as an independent film festival coordinator and programmer. Back in Boston, she previously co-founded the Crows & Sparrows screening series, she has served on the selection committee for the Revolutions per Minute Film Festival, and she has served as a media arts panelist for the Boston Cultural Council and National Endowment for the Arts. Outside of her work at LEF, Gen is interested in writing, curating, filmmaking, music, and DIY arts community building as a member of the AgX Film Collective.

Matthew LaPaglia

Program Officer

Matthew became the LEF Foundation’s Program Officer in 2021, having moved to the Boston area in 2018 to complete his M.F.A. in film and media art at Emerson College. Originally from Central New York, Matthew attended Colgate University, where he studied history and film and attended the Flaherty Film Seminar. In addition to having worked in film production, marketing, and higher education, Matthew is a scholar whose research centers the conceptual nuances of queer art-making. He is also a film/video artist and writer creating work that examines art practice as a historiographical tool and explores where memory and identity coalesce with(in) collective narratives. His hybrid documentary, From a Spaceless Within, had its world premiere at Hot Docs in 2022, and he is the co-writer of The Red Sea Makes Me Wanna Cry, which was selected for the 2023 Quinzaine des cinéastes (Directors’ Fortnight) at Cannes. Matthew enjoys going for long runs outside of the city, being close enough to the stage to see the performer’s eyelashes, and casually looking at birds. He is never far from a book.

Marina Drummer

California Grants Advisor

Marina has worked with the foundation since its inception in 1985. She runs her own non-profit, Community Futures Collective, that serves as a fiscal sponsor for grassroots organizations as well as providing infrastructure development. In addition, Marina serves as Administrator of the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival.