Cast & Crew


Bios

Genevieve Diaz lives and plays in San Francisco, California. By what feels like both a happy accident and fate, she has built a career and art practice around one central question: What is worth remembering? She began her career at MasterClass in Post Production, where she first met Carolyn and Tiajha. From there, she joined Even/Odd, contributing to projects such as 1-800 Happy Birthday, a voicemail project and exhibition honoring Black and Brown people killed by police. The work was presented physically in New York City and featured in The New York Times and Vogue. Genevieve is now part of the Steve Jobs Archive, where she continues exploring memory, legacy, and storytelling in digital form. The Summer of Lexi and Dawn is her directorial debut. Her work as a filmmaker continues this exploration, creating space for stories that honor the fragility and resilience of human connection.

Carolyn Mazanec grew up in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where her sleepy suburban upbringing inspired the backdrop of The Summer of Lexi & Dawn. In high school, she published a novel called A Pink House, which similarly explored themes of self discovery and the critical role friendships play in this coming-of-age story.
Carolyn then went on to study Communications, English and Film at Northwestern University, where she found her love for screenwriting. Her script, Casey Blatt, placed as a semi-finalist in the 2018 ScreenCraft TV Pilot Script Competition.
After graduating, Carolyn met Tiajha and Genevieve in the post production department at MasterClass, and they quickly started working on The Summer of Lexi & Dawn (on weekends and lunch breaks). The script placed as a quarter-finalist in the 2019 ScreenCraft Short Film Screenplay Competition. While working on this project, Carolyn also began a web comic called Debbie’s Dry Cleaning, which follows the escapades of a magical seamstress in San Francisco.
Carolyn now resides in Oakland, where she works at Pixar and goes on many hikes with her dog, Gary.

Born and raised in Okinawa, Japan, Tiajha Nakahara moved to the United States to study Design Media Arts and Film at UCLA. She has since worked across post production at Copeland, MasterClass, and Pixar—roles united by a mission to provide easy access to online education.
As a producer, her film GAMERS played at more than 40 festivals, including Frameline43, CAAMFest, Outfest Fusion, and the Pan African Film Festival. Additional credits include All Men Are Flowers (Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival), The Caterpillar Trail (Best Drama Short, North Hollywood CineFest), and Love Light (Best Cinematography, Campus Movie Fest; official selection, Cannes Short Film Corner).
Outside of filmmaking, she's happily "directed" by her three-year-old daughter, explores new resturants and cafes, plays tennis, and is currently learning to crochet.

Annie Erickson is an editor and post production operations supervisor at MasterClass based in San Francisco, California. A Wisconsin native who began college pursuing genetic engineering, she found her true calling when she was assigned to create a documentary about the university labs. The experience of discovering a compelling narrative hidden within all of the raw footage became an irresistible creative challenge. Since relocating to San Francisco in 2018, Annie has worked on 40+ projects at MasterClass.