Cherie Saulter is an independent filmmaker and a scholar. She received her BFA in Motion Picture, Television, and the Recording Arts from Florida State University. Cherie’s first feature as a writer/director, No Matter What, premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in 2011. As a producer, her credits include Medicine For Melancholy (2008) and This Is Martin Bonner (2013), among others. In 2014, she received the John Cassavetes Award at the Film Independent Spirit Awards for her work on This Is Martin Bonner. She took a longer than anticipated break from filmmaking to pursue an MA in Global Policy Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD in International Relations from American University, which she completed in 2022. Her dissertation focused on the daily experiences of residents of informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya, where she conducted extensive qualitative research. In both her artistic and academic work, she is interested in exploring themes of precarity and community.