Who We Are

Inna Kopelevich
Founder, Director

team@isss-la.org

Inna Kopelevich was born in Lithuania, a republic of the former Soviet Union. She came to the United States as a young girl and attended LAUSD public schools. She graduated from UCLA in 1998, where she studied math and history. She then worked in the music industry for six years before going back to school to obtain a Master’s degree and teaching credential. She has been an Algebra teacher at Johnnie Cochran Middle School since 2005.

Sara Hernandez

Board Member

Sara Hernandez grew up in Salinas, CA. She attended Duke University in Durham, North Carolina where she majored in Public Policy with a minor in Spanish. At Duke, Sara founded the First Generation College Student Fund for low-income students in the Durham community as well as a college mentoring program called STEPS (Students Taking Educational Progress Seriously) that works in conjunction with AVID program in Durham public schools. After Duke, Sara joined Teach for America in Los Angeles. She taught English and Social Studies at Johnnie Cochran Middle School for three years while also earning a Masters in Education from Loyola Marymount University. Sara truly believes that education is the way out of poverty and will continue to fight and work for educational equity in our urban schools even as she begins law school at Loyola in Los Angeles.

Stephanie Carter
Board Member

team@isss-la.org

Stephanie is a native of and started her career in education in the state of Virginia. She graduated from Old Dominion University in 1998. From there she began teaching in Virginia Beach City Public Schools working with at risk high school students. Stephanie moved to Los Angeles where she began working at JL Cochran Middle School during the 2002 school year. In seeing the desire and need of many of Los Angeles inner city students Stephanie is working to provide all students with the ability to be successful no matter what obstacles may be in the way.
Stephanie acts as student advisor and will be assisting this years students that are applying to elite high schools in the Los Angeles area.

Rustum Jacob
Board Member

team@isss-la.org

Rustum is dedicated to helping students recieve the same opportunities he had growing up.

Elsa Ramo

Attorney, Board Member

Ms. Ramo is an entertainment attorney, representing many corporate clients as well as individual writers, directors, and producers in the entertainment industry. Elsa graduated from University of San Diego School of Law, and moved into entertainment law with Davis Dixon Kirby LLP. She now has established her presence in her law firm in Beverly Hills. She continues to remain Of Counsel at her previous law firm and with MindFusion.

Her specialties span the spectrum of entertainment legal needs: Corporate/Entity Representation, Contract Negotiation, Review and Drafting, Producer/Writer Representative Services, Trademark and Copyright filing and litigation, and Corporate Formations, Acquisition, and Mergers. The focus of her practice is to be a legal resource to film financiers, producers and other creative individuals in the industry.

Her law firm has two full time attorneys and a full staff who have provided production legal services to over 30 television, feature film, short film and documentary productions. Some of which include: LOADED starring Jesse Metcalfe; Jamie Kennedy's documentaries UNWASHED (featured on Comedy Central) and HECKLER (which recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival); SUFFERING FOOLS starring Alan Cumming, Dave Boreanaz and Anne Heche; BORDER, a Feature Documentary theatrically released this year; Sony Picture’s CHASING GHOSTS, with Michael Madsen and Gary Busey; GENE GENERATION starring Bai Ling; CREEP SHOW 3; televisions series THE DL CHRONICLES; and THE BRIDGE TO NOWHERE directed by Blair Underwood.

Additionally, Elsa Ramo has produced GHOST GAME and CULT and was an associate producer for THE LAST SENTINEL and co-produced the film A WOMAN CALLED JOB currently in post-production. Outside of membership in the four Bar Associations (California, American, Beverly Hills, & Los Angeles), Elsa is also a member of Film Independent, Women in Film, California Lawyers for the Arts and is the founder of PEFA (an organization for female attorneys in the entertainment industry. She has also been a panel speaker at Boston University School of Law, and the San Diego Film Festival, University of Southern California.

More information about Elsa Ramo can be found on her company website: www.entertainmentattorney.biz.

Roman Kopelevich

Board Member

Vice President of Worldwide Sales, Kopelevich oversees Bleiberg Entertainment's burgeoning international sales slate and handles sales operations for the company's film library in all territories worldwide. These include the international sensation, The Band’s Visit which has won major awards at the Cannes Film Festival, Munich Film Festival, Karlovy Vary, Copenhagen and Jerusalem Film Festivals; as well as He Was a Quiet Man starring Christian Slater, Elisha Cuthbert and William Macy; Adam Resurrected directed by Paul Schrader and starring Jeff Goldblum and Willem Dafoe; Lonesome Jim starring Casey Affleck and Liv Tyler; One Last Dance starring Harvey Keitel; Heckler, starring Jamie Kennedy and Stephanie Daley starring the Oscar winner Tilda Swinton. Most recently, he spearheaded the acquisition and foreign sales of Gene Generation, a science fiction action film starring Bai Ling.

Kopelevich has over 16 years of experience in the international sales arena. Prior to his current post, he served as Director of International Sales at Morgan Creek where he sold the foreign rights to The Good Shepherd starring Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and Robert De Niro as well as Two For the Money starring Al Pacino and Matthew McConaughey. Prior to Media 8, he served as Director of Distribution Services for Media 8 Entertainment, where he handled foreign rights sales and distribution focusing on international theatrical, video/DVD and television distributors in Europe, South Asia, Latin America and the Middle East for films including the Oscar winner, Monster starring Charlize Theron; Upside of Anger starring Kevin Costner; Havoc starring Anne Hathaway; Man About Town starring Ben Affleck and Running Scared starring Paul Walker.
Prior to joining Media 8, Kopelevich held the position of Vice President Entertainment Sales & Marketing at Filmbazaar.com. As a founding partner, he conceptualized, developed and launched the web site and created and executed global marketing activity as well as sales campaigns to sell services to independent foreign sales companies and international distributors. Additionally, he spearheaded development of strategic outreach programs and oversaw campaigns to secure industry partnerships and led business trips to China, Hong Kong and Italy.

Prior to Filmbazaar.com, Kopelevich served as Director of Sales at Fox International Home Entertainment for two years overseeing sales of Fox theatrical and straight to video titles. He began his career at New World Entertainment in 1992; where he handled sales in both the video and television arena’s for one of the largest independent film libraries.

Alex “Bugsy” Lyudmir
Event coordinator,

Board Member

Alex Lyudmir “Bugsy”, born in the Ukraine, moved to the US when he was seven years old. He discovered his love for promotions and marketing via nightlife. Since then he has planted his foot in the industry and flourished. He stood apart early on, honing his skills in nightlife.

For the last three years, Bugsy has owned and operated hip downtown lounge Soho: 323/Noca. There he used his unique creative style to produce high profile, one-of-a-kind events. His weekly parties and high profile destination events have attracted a faithful following of trend setters from fashion, film and nightlife at a myriad of popular venues like, Limelight, Tunnel, Palladium, USA, Studio 54, The Roxy, Chaos, Groove Jet, Amnesia, Crobar, Liquid and Twilo.

While at 323, Bugsy produced events for various philanthropic causes. For two consecutive years - 2005 and 2006, he organized events for the W.O.W.S.E Foundation. In 2005 Bugsy's efforts for the W.O.W.S.E foundation resulted in the highest donation of turkeys for the homeless in New York. Bugsy will now lend his expertise to ISSS.

Rachel Torrey

Consultant

Rachel Torrey is from outside Washington DC and is the product of Montgomery County Public schools. She attended Washington University in St Louis, where she majored in biology and minored in ballet. During her time at Wash U, Rachel was a member of the dance team and Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority. She discovered her interest in education by working as a camp counselor, hands-on science teacher, ‘Mad Scientist,’ and tutor in St Louis. Upon graduating in May 2005, Rachel joined the Los Angeles Teach for America corps. She taught 8th grade science at Johnnie Cochran Middle School for three years. In addition to teaching, Rachel was the Science Department chair, mentor teacher, technology coordinator, and cheerleading coach. She plans on staying in education for many years, and is currently teaching at View Park Prep Charter Middle School in South Los Angeles.

Independent School Support Systems
1039 N Harper Ave #9
West Hollywood, CA 90046

e-mail: team@isss-la.org
Call: 323-275-1866

Please contact us if you have a comment or question


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