2011.Contact a member of the leadership team to explore how Purple States video can bring the voices and stories of ordinary people to your platform, content, organization, brand, or issue.

Cynthia Farrar - Founder, CEO, and executive producer

Cynthia leads the company and collaborates with John and Cinnamon in generating ideas, securing funding, enlisting platforms and partners, and overseeing production. The idea for Purple States emerged from her work as an entrepreneurial academic with a special interest in using the media to engage ordinary citizens as full partners in American democracy. From 2003-2007, with MacNeil/Lehrer Productions and public television stations around the country, she orchestrated non-partisan conversations among randomly-invited citizens. She is a Research Scholar at Yale University's Institution for Social and Policy Studies and teaches in the political science department.

John Kennedy - Co-founder and co-executive producer

John plays a range of leadership and operational roles, including business development (Stass, Five Years Left), global and domestic field production (World Without Walls, Primaries ’08, Degrees of Difficulty) and direction (Election ’08, Farmers’ Film), as well as executive production, and has led our efforts to engage nonprofits and corporations. He makes all the cold calls. A one-time teacher and experienced journalist, John has published over 900 articles in media specializing in human interest/technology, from Crain's New York Business, to Trail Runner Magazine, to Mother and Baby. Edited Unstrung.com, an online magazine that focuses on the wireless technology industry.

Cinnamon Kennedy - Co-founder, producer, and creative director

Cinnamon originated many of Purple States’ innovations, including our emphasis on remote and global self-filming as a new journalistic tool. She has pioneered the process of managed self-filming, the creation of focused, watchable, professionally edited self-filmed media. Cinnamon produced the MDG and World Without Walls series, and is producing The Farmers Film. She edits virtually all the trailers and many of the self-filmed videos, and advises on every aspect of design and the creative use of technology in new contexts. In a previous life, she was a successful freelance writer and journalist for print and the internet. Her hobbies include video editing and experimental art.

Robinson Farrar - Webmaster

Robinson currently attends McGill University for Computer Science while simultaneously pursuing interests in design, learning, and games. Eli Luberoff was our original webmaster and has advised and periodically rescued us ever since.