DGA National Executive Director Jay D. Roth announced today the promotion of three senior staff executives and the expansion of the senior staff team.
Eastern Executive Director/Associate National Executive Director Russ Hollander will be relocating from New York to Los Angeles effective January 1, 2016 and taking on additional national staff duties operating out of the National Office.
Hollander will join Associate National Executive Directors Bryan Unger and David Korduner on the West Coast to focus on industry negotiations and the growing challenges of national and international representation of directors and their teams in all genres represented by the DGA.
Both Hollander and Unger will be dropping their respective Eastern and Western Executive Director titles. Associate Eastern Executive Director Neil Dudich has been promoted to Eastern Executive Director effective January 1, 2016 and will head the New York Office. Danny Bush, Associate Western Executive Director, has been promoted to Western Executive Director effective January 1, 2016 and will have regional responsibility for administration of the West Coast Office.
“As the membership of the Guild has grown, so too has the staff infrastructure to support directors and their teams throughout the nation and the world,” said Roth. “I am pleased that Russ will be joining Bryan and David here in the National Office for the continuing benefit of all DGA members. The promotions of Neil Dudich and Danny Bush to Eastern and Western Executive Directors will enable expanded member service in these geographic regions."
Russ Hollander
Russ Hollander has served as the chief of staff of the DGA’s New York Office since 2002. In that position, he has been the Guild’s chief spokesperson in the negotiation of the DGA’s Network Staff Agreement and the National Commercial Agreement. He has also been a major participant in the Basic Agreement negotiations since 2007, and played a key role in the negotiation of provisions related to New Media. Hollander’s other responsibilities have included oversight of enforcement of the Guild’s collective bargaining agreements in the Eastern region and national responsibility for non-dramatic programming, News, Sports, Commercials and New Media.
Hollander joined the DGA in 2001 as Assistant Eastern Executive Director, was promoted to Eastern Executive Director in 2002, and promoted again in 2011 to Eastern Executive Director/Associate National Executive Director. Prior to joining the DGA, Hollander was a partner at top labor law firm Cohen, Weiss and Simon LLP where he specialized in the representation of labor organizations and employee benefit plans. Hollander received his law degree from Harvard University and his undergraduate degree from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Neil Dudich
Neil Dudich joined the DGA in 2007 as Assistant Executive Director in the New York Office. In that role, he served as staff liaison to the Eastern AD/SM/PA Council as well as the Eastern Diversity Steering Committee. Since his promotion to Associate Eastern Executive Director in 2014, Dudich has worked with the Eastern AD/UPM Council and oversees all issues related to assistant directors and unit production managers on the East Coast and has been responsible for managing the Guild’s field representatives in the Eastern region.
Dudich came to the DGA from the New York State United Teachers, where he served as in-house counsel specializing in the representation of professionals on a wide range of labor and employment matters. He received his B.A. from Boston University, his J.D. from St. John’s University, and his MBA from New York University's Stern School of Business.
Danny Bush
Danny Bush joined the DGA in 2012 as an Assistant Executive Director in the Guild’s Los Angeles headquarters, focusing on areas related to representation, contract enforcement and organizing. He oversees the Guild’s Contracts department, including the expanded Western field representative program that visits members on film, TV and commercial sets, sporting events, and local stations across the country and in Canada.
Bush came to the DGA from Bush Gottlieb, a union-side labor law firm, where he was an attorney representing public and private sector labor unions, and also served as lead negotiator for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Previously, he worked for the SEIU as an organizer. Bush received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Davis and his J.D. from Yale Law School.
Additional Recent Staff Announcements
The expansion of the Guild and the strengthening of the organization’s staff leadership were also evidenced by the recent hiring of Joan Sumpter as the Guild’s new CFO (announced October 12, 2015) and the promotions of: Associate Western Executive Director Lisa Layer to lead organizing on a national scale (announced October 7, 2015), and Associate Executive Director Sahar Moridani to oversee the administration of a number of the Guild’s operations including Reports Compliance, Residuals Processing and related contract administration and enforcement functions (announced June 23, 2015).
About the DGA
In the 79 years since its founding in 1936, the DGA has fought for the economic and creative rights of its members; protected their ability to financially benefit from the reuse of their work; established strong pension and health plans; and established jurisdiction in new technologies and distribution platforms. Today the DGA represents more than 16,000 directors and members of the directorial team working in film, television, commercials, new media and other audiovisual media. www.dga.org
