Brittany Neff

LIFE & WORK

I have worked across diverse fields and projects around the world, primarily focused in the domains of environmental justice, public health, storytelling & filmmaking, event production and experiential education. Traveling and working in 30+ countries has helped me to cultivate a global perspective and deep love for people from all walks of life. This love of people and planet, and my quest to understand the vast human experience motivates my work in the world.

In 2016 I co-founded an art and storytelling collective called Collective Reality (CoReality), aimed at leveraging emergent and immersive storytelling tools to shift human consciousness.  CoReality was an outward manifestation of my own journey and transformation at the time, and we focused on creating content from an ethos rooted in our interconnectedness to the earth and one another.  As a co-founder of CoReality, I helped to produce a range of social good content for several years using Virtual Reality as a tool to bring viewers into stories intended to invoke empathy.  The first of these film projects was called ‘Rise Above’, and was made in partnership with an organization called Womankind that works with survivors of gender-based violence to rise above trauma and build a path to healing.  ‘Rise Above’ shared the story of a 17 year-old survivor of trauma also named Brittany.  Helping Brittany to amplify her voice and regain autonomy of her story was a profoundly meaningful and enriching experience for me.

For the following two years, I created VR/360 films with the motivation to amplify marginalized perspectives. In 2017, I travelled down to the Brazilian Amazon to make a documentary about indigenous forest protectors of the Guajajara indigenous people, protecting their land from illegal logging. We aimed to convey the reality of what was happening on the ground in the Guajajara indigenous territory, while also illuminating the incredible courage of the guardians and their grief over their forests being destroyed. In the short 360 film, we attempted to convey how cultural imperialism and extractive capitalism are responsible for the destruction of the Amazon, and that underlying these forces lies a separatist worldview that sees nature as something to be conquered.

Following the co-creation of “Guardians of the Forest'' in 2017 in the Brazilian Amazon, I began working more directly on environmental issues, and throughout 2018 and 2019 I worked as a production manager for a participatory environmental film collective called “If Not Us Then Who?” (INUTW). While working for INUTW, in 2018, I produced the ‘Our Village Community Corner’, a 4 day cultural hub and immersive experience in San Francisco coinciding with the Global Climate Action Summit. I also produced the ‘Our Village’ 4 day cultural hub again in NYC during Climate Week in September of 2019. ‘Our Village’ was a gathering place for an international delegation of indigenous leaders alongside point people from major environmental NGO’s that work to protect our tropical forests, a place to come together in solidarity and amplify the voices of indigenous leaders and frontline leaders from across the world.

In 2019 and 2020 I worked directly for Atossa Soltani, founder of Amazon Watch and tireless defender of the Amazon Rainforest for over 30 years, and together we worked to strengthen alliances in the protection of the Amazon Rainforest. When the coronavirus began to affect traditional and indigenous communities in the Amazon in April 2020, we pivotted our work and catalyzed the formation of ‘The Amazon Emergency Fund’, a donor-collaborative fund of 30+ indigenous Amazonian federations and non-governmental organizations working in partnership to provide relief to communities impacted by the novel coronavirus in the Amazon basin. Through this work, I learned critical community building skills and how to weave many different stakeholders together to better coordinate and collaborate our efforts in defense of the Amazon and indigenous peoples.

In the summer of 2020, I decided to take a step back from the environmental work I had been doing and I let go of my apartment and the life I had known, to go on a self-directed learning journey, traveling and living in many different places. I have spent time since then living in various intentional communities, and have also spent significant time in solitude, out in nature, and offline. In the summer of 2020 I lived off grid in an intentional community in Oregon, and then in the fall, I journeyed through the Southwest of the US, spending time in wild places of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado. In 2021 I lived and travelled in Hawaii, Guatemala, California, Washington, Alaska, New Mexico, Scotland and Spain. In many of these places I lived and learned within rich community contexts. Through these experiences, I became very interested in the healing powers of community, and group practices that cultivate vulnerability, care & presence. I’m fascinated with social organization, language and communication, and I have loved learning about different approaches to effective communication, mediation and conflict resolution, such as non-violent communication. At the beginning of 2022 I moved to Ojai, CA to participate in a yoga teacher training, as I also actively participated in a year long program called the Design Science Studio.  In the summer of 2022 I had a significant shoulder injury and was unable to work consistently for many months and I learned how to slow way down to allow my body time to heal.

In 2023 I was the lead producer of the Indigenous Imaginarium with ‘If Not Us Then Who’, a week-long incubator that brought 23 International Indigenous storytellers to create bridges between them and the media industry in Los Angeles.  My role was dynamic and involved managing key partnerships, curating the program, co-managing the budget and coordinating many details for the week. 

I feel that our collective liberation can be found through sharing ideas with one another, and deeply listening to one another. I believe that learning and practicing the art of compassionate communication is fundamental to planetary regeneration. I believe that we all possess the innate capacity to have fulfilling, connective, healthy relationships, and I see trust & love-based connection as the necessary foundation for the spontaneous collaboration it will take to create a world that works for 100% of all life. I am learning and working in service to this world, where all people feel their intrinsic belonging to the larger web of life, and feel the courage, freedom and support to follow their passions and express themselves creatively.

I am currently exploring and experimenting in the realms of experiential production & design, sustainability consulting, dialogue facilitation, yoga & dance, and communication counseling.