Polita Glynn: Project Director and filmmaker/producer/director

Polita Glynn is a filmmaker and director of Merfolk Media Alliance. She specializes in documentary filmmaking, screenwriting and creative storytelling focused on history, cultural diversity and environment. Her independent films have been funded by the State of Florida, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Miami-Dade County Cultural Affairs Council. She received a 1996 Individual Artists Fellowship in Media Arts from the State of Florida, a 2015 Sundance Screenwriters Fellowship, a 2022 St. Pete Arts Alliance Artist grant and a 2024 Creative Pinellas Beyond Placemaking Artists grant.  

In 2005, she needed to pivot away from being a full-time filmmaker and accepted a position as Director of the Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation, an international program focused on ocean protection. 

In stepping down from that position 2022, she returned full-time to filmmaking and writing. In 2021, Glynn moved from Miami to St. Petersburg and created Merfolk Media Alliance, a small non-profit organization. She proposed and was awarded a 2022 Florida Humanities Media grant to produce Underground history, a video which poses the question whether a community can consider a better vision for the future through an expanded understanding of its history.  

Glynn received her B.A. in American Studies from Bennington College, Ed.M. from Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and studied film and television production at the University of Miami School of Communication.