Message from the Departing CEO
It is hard to believe that the IPF has been around for 28 years… and even harder to believe that I have been at the IPF that long too! Producers used to phone to ask us to mail them the funding Guidelines that we carefully printed each year. Mail! We loved the rush of deadline days when producers turned up at 5 pm with beautiful application packages. It feels so prehistoric now!
Nearly 2000 applications later, with over $73M invested in 143 web series and 265 TV series, as well as IPF’s management of the Bell Fund for 18 years, the Cogeco Fund for 25 years, and various other smaller Funds, it’s time for me to move over… don’t you think?
The IPF has renewed itself (and me) over the years, responding to disruption, new technology, funding gaps, the digital revolution, the CRTC, and most importantly, to audiences. To go where producers have not gone, yet… And the industry has responded with so much creativity, talent and commitment. That’s what it is all about: enabling great Canadian productions. Or as my young daughter once described, “my mother’s job is to give out money”!
My sojourn at the IPF has been accompanied by so many great people on the team, who made what we all wanted to accomplish, possible. So many thanks go to them for their dedication, diligence and insights over the years, especially Carly McGowan who has been my right hand for the past decade and figured out how to keep me calm. My partner-in- crime, all these years, Claire Dion who runs our Montreal office, has inspired me and been an amazing collaborator (and now a travel companion).
When I first started working in the film and TV industry (after years studying child psychology), I was told that it would get in my blood. And it did. (But the child psych has come in handy too!)
Andra Sheffer
