NORTH JERSEY: Born in Elizabeth, N.J., Melissa Beatriz Skolnick is a second-year Ph.D. student studying social welfare at the School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2). She is also a research fellow at SP2 and director of the CAMRA Film Fellows Program, which provides multimedia research opportunities to undergraduate students.

BEHIND THE SCENES: Skolnick studied sociology and Spanish as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware, and received her master’s in social work from SP2. She is interested in the policy aspect of social work, such as fundraising for organizations and program development. “Social work is unique in that those in the field can focus on micro, mezzo, or macro issues,” she says. “There is value in all of these levels, as these components need to work together. I have spent much of my career focused on mezzo and macro social work, through working with community groups and trying to enact systemic changes. Through my graduate studies, I am now analyzing how inequity plays a role in the broader social welfare system, while also creating solutions that lead to social equity.”

MAKER OF FILM: A documentary filmmaker, too, Skolnick is co-director of “The Public Classroom @ Penn Museum: Science and Race,” a forthcoming film produced by CAMRA and co-directed by Arjun Shankar, Andrew Hudson, and Ore Badaki; “When Life Gives You Lemons,” a film produced with the Philadelphia Reentry Think Tank about a formerly incarcerated individual advocating for city-level changes; and “The Engine of My Life,” a documentary produced by the Media Mobilizing Project and co-directed by Milena Velis about two sisters who advocate for immigrant rights through the New Sanctuary Movement.

DOCUSHORT: “A lot of the films I work on are usually short documentaries,” Skolnick says. “They usually talk about some kind of social justice issue, and I’m trying to tie it to some kind of change, whether it’s policy related or raising awareness.” She has also consulted on films produced by SP2 and GSE Films, and was a co-instructor for the courses “Journalism for Social Change” and “Social Change through Participatory Filmmaking.”

MULTIMEDIA RESEARCH: The CAMRA Fellows Program pairs undergrads with a graduate student mentor, and each fellow works on a documentary or multimedia project. “It’s really trying to expose the undergrads to using multimedia in their research, and just getting to know a little bit more about the possibilities of graduate school,” Skolnick says. “That’s been really fun. It’s exciting to mentor students and people who are newer to filmmaking and see their growth as they develop their projects.”

SOCIAL JUSTICE: Skolnick says she became interested in social justice by way of growing up in a multicultural bilingual family. Her mother immigrated from Uruguay and her father is American, and she says they shared stories with her about inequality on both sides of the equator. “I think multimedia in general—a combination of writing, documentaries, and photography—can be tools for social change because it brings awareness to an array of stories that might not necessarily be portrayed in the mainstream media,” she says. “That’s one of my goals, to really work in collaboration with communities and then share authentic stories that spark action and advocate for human rights.”

LET US ALL PULL TOGETHER: This July, Skolnick will travel to Kenya with Peter Decherney, a professor of English and cinema studies, and eight Penn undergraduate students. She will work as a teaching assistant for Decherney, along with TA Jean Lee, for a course he is instructing that will work with the organization Film Aid to create an orientation film for new arrivals at a Kenyan refugee camp.

FORWARD THINKING: Long term, Skolnick says she plans to continue writing and making documentaries, but on a bigger scale and having more of an impact, “whether that’s on a policy level or just reaching more people throughout the world.”