About Us
Shoes Off Media an intergenerational Asian women-led production company centering underrepresented storytellers with lived experiences both in front of and behind the lens.
We are a full service soup-to-nuts production company that develops, produces, and edits narrative and documentary shorts, series, features, and branded content. Our team works locally in New York City, the Bay Area, D.C., Philly, and Boston.
Co-Founder | Executive Producer
Carol Paik is a 2nd generation Korean-American and currently the Creative Director for documentary group iTVS and Independent Lens. She is an Emmy-winning producer with over 15 years experience in entertainment marketing, creating content and campaigns for NPR, PBS, Discovery, National Geographic, Acorn TV, and HBO. Carol is passionate about bringing diverse stories and storytellers to the forefront that are character-driven and socially-conscious.
Co-Founder | Head of Production
Shannon Sun-Higginson is a biracial Chinese American documentary producer and director. Her first feature GTFO was funded on Kickstarter, premiered at SXSW, and was featured in the NYTimes. She executive produced feature documentary The Witmans (Discovery), produced Peabody award-winning docuseries Philly DA (Sundance, Berlinale, PBS), and directed two episodes of docuseries Take Out (HBO Max). Most recently, she produced feature docs Kenyatta (Frameline, SF DocFest) and Grand Knighthawk (ABC, Hulu). She is a two-time Sundance fellow.
C0-Founder | Head of Development
Kitty Hu is a Chinese diasporic documentary filmmaker and visual journalist with roots in the Bay Area, California. As the daughter of immigrants, Kitty’s work applies community-centered documentary tactics to amplify stories at the intersection of justice and human relationships, looking at topics like labor, housing, culture, migration and climate. Her work has been featured on HBO, CNN+, Hulu, PBS, NBC, and her personal short, Golden Boy, played in festivals nationally including DOC NYC and LAAPFF.
Values
Centering those with lived experiences and co-conspiring with communities on the ground. We believe in collaborating with participants as equal contributors to a project, and being intentional about hiring crew from similar backgrounds to the participants whose stories we’re telling.
We lead with an abundance mindset—our communities’ stories are inherently valuable and we aim to uplift, not compete. We hope that through our filmmaking processes and practices, we can lead by example and work with the industry to adequately fund our stories.
We’re knocking down the door and keeping it open. As we build with Shoes Off Media, we hope to support under-resourced creatives and community-engaged media. We aim to lead with transparency and accountability, and bring more of our communities into the process.
We are people first. We carry a human-centered approach to our work processes and operate with honesty, respect and grace. Practically, this means we want the people we work with to prioritize their mental health and wellbeing, have work-life balance and engage in an open line of communication.