Podcasts, Presentations, and Public Speaking

As part of our work on Identifying Nelson/Buscando a Roberto, myself, and John Younger launched the Inside the Journey Podcast to share our progress and interview people who were affected by El Salvador's 13-year-long civil war.

In this meetup, we will be hearing from Alecia and Nelson, experienced filmmakers that have worked on a range of projects, product promotions an crowdfunding campaigns on what not to do when you are filming your crowd funding or product videos.

We'll also be sharing local crowdfunding campaigns that are underway - so if you have a campaign that you will be about to launch, or will be live, then please let us know (email: crowd at hazelbutters.com) so we can give you a shout out and include you on handouts for the evening.

Read More

Nelson de Witt spoke to WHS students during Winter Week. de Witt shared his experience of discovering that he was one of the missing children taken from his family in El Salvador during the Salvadoran Civil War. "It’s important to put ourselves in other people’s shoes, but it is often very hard to do so,” de Witt said.

Read More

In June of 2015, I spoke at Wass Innovations nights to announce the launch of the Mama Chila Foundation.

In January 2015, I returned to Dexter Southfield for its 2nd annual Diversity Day. I gave an update about my film, Identifying Nelson/Buscando a Roberto, and talked about what it meant to work on a project over the course of several years.

In October 2014, I spoke at an event put on by the Association of Salvadoreños at Yale University (ASY). I shared a few scenes from my film, Identifying Nelson/Buscando a Roberto, and talked to them about what it meant to them to be a generation removed from the war in El Salvador.

In September 2014, I showed an eight-minute preview of my film, Identifying Nelson/Buscando a Roberto, at the Aurora Free Library and Wells College. They were two great events that were met with great enthusiasm by the local community.

In March 2014, I showed an eight-minute preview of my film, Identifying Nelson/Buscando a Roberto, at the Newton Marriott.

In April 2014, I showed an eight-minute preview of my film, Identifying Nelson/Buscando a Roberto, to a group of students at Worcester State College.

In February 2014, I spoke to the Wentworth Accelerate Program about Kickstarter and entrepreneurship. I help students think about how they could use Kickstarter to get funding and how to tell the story of their idea.

In February 2014, I spoke to students at Emmerson College about how to run a successful Kickstarter campaign.

In May of 2013, I showed an eight-minute preview of my film, Identifying Nelson/Buscando a Roberto, to the attendees of the first Misfit Conference in Fargo, ND.

Crowd-funding sites such as Kickstarter have become very popular in recent years. These sites give people the sense that the world will just discover, support, and love their project. But that's not always the case. Why do some projects generate enough interest to be greatly overfunded, and others just fall short?

In this talk, Nelson de Witt, author of “A Kickstarter's Guide to Kickstarter,” will help you understand how crowdfunding actually works, and what it takes to run an effective campaign. Drawing on lessons learned from his own experience and from studies of hundreds of Kickstarter projects, Mr. de Witt will discuss the most critical components that lead to a project's success and why crowdfunding platforms are so misunderstood.

Margaret E. Ward, wife of Lasell's President Emeritus Thomas E.J. de Witt, shared her family's touching story of international adoption and its connection to the Salvadoran Civil War Wednesday as she read from her new book, Missing Mila, Finding Family: An International Adoption in the Shadow of the Salvadoran Civil War.

The event, which was held in Lasell's de Witt Hall, included a talk and reading by Ward and a discussion of a new documentary film by Ward's son Nelson de Witt, whose adoption is the subject of the book.