Voting is now open to determine the member-elected seats on the CCA Board of Directors. If you haven’t had the opportunity to review the candidate statements, we encourage you to login to the Website and click on the “Member Home” page.

This election is only open to CCA Voting Members, which includes you.

The voting period will end on Thursday, June 12 at 9PM PT and the results will be announced on June 19.

Please click the link below and vote for up to SEVEN (7) candidates:
https://forms.gle/mmRvgUoNUXCEi7ha6

For technical support, please email [email protected]

Hello, fellow Critics Choice Association members!

It has been my absolute pleasure to serve you all as a member of the CCA Board of Directors these past two years, and I hope to continue in this role with your vote in the upcoming election.

During my time on the Board, I have made it a priority to listen to and advocate for our members. I have also made efforts to encourage more involvement, with a particular push for diversity, to enrich our nominating committees and other areas of our organization.

Last year, I began overseeing a team dedicated to carefully vetting new applicants and surveying current members to maintain CCA’s integrity and our value in the awards space. This team and its process have also helped better support members and quickly assist with any needs or concerns.

Additionally, I continue to represent the Critics Choice Documentary Awards on the Board as the co-creator of the yearly event, which celebrates its 10th ceremony this fall. The CCDAs have grown exponentially to become one of the organization’s most successful endeavors.

Even with the expansion and progress the CCA has experienced in the 11 years since I’ve been a member, I’m always thinking of ways to further develop and improve the organization. I have a lot of ideas on how to make being a CCA member even better, and how to make our big show even more significant to the film and TV industry and artists.

Please consider me for another term on the Board, and let’s keep CCA ascending forward.

First, thank you all for your continued confidence in my abilities to help lead this organization. I was happy to join the board a few years ago and pleased to have been re-elected last cycle. And this is a job I do not take lightly. Despite the upheaval both within our industry and within our organization, we are in an enviable place. We have steadfastly weathered the fires, strikes, and the tragic loss of board members Sam Rubin and Jim Ferguson. I am now more than ever dedicated to ensuring that the executive leadership continues to grow, listen, and learn from our members so that we may continue to be a place for both fellowship and an arbiter of quality within the industry. 

Over my years on the board, I have learned much about the organization, its functions, and how I can best assist it. This is why I joined and continue to be a part of the Compensation Committee, where I try to ensure that all of the payroll funds within the organization are distributed fairly. As a working journalist who interacts with many of you more often than most, I have been passionately committed to ensuring that the organization’s decisions reflect the wishes of those within it. I take your feedback very seriously and always strive to keep the members at the top of my mind when deciding anything. Furthermore, I hope to be a place where you can voice concerns. This is why I was instrumental in creating the MAC Committee and chaired it on an interim basis through its first year. I believe the MAC as a group achieved a lot—some of these changes you have seen in Joey’s recent missives. 

If I am elected for a third term, I plan to maintain my current responsibilities and look to the future of the CCA. This includes legacy planning, advocating for more transparency around executive functions, membership transparency, and more prompt member communications. Regardless of this election’s outcome, I want to thank you all and say it has been my privilege to be a small part of our success. And I hope to continue in this role as we head into the next chapter.  

Thank you, and I’ll see y’all at the movies.

It has been an honor to serve on the Critics Choice Association Board over the past term, and I aim to continue to have your support for re-election.

During my time on the Board, I’ve worked diligently to uphold the integrity and growth of our organization. As Board secretary, I’ve been committed to recording our Board meetings, working to deliver clear, organized communication and transparency. In addition, I’ve also proudly overseen and programmed the Celebration of Latino Cinema & Television for the last four years — an initiative that continues to elevate historically underrepresented voices, celebrate cultural excellence and expand our reach as a truly inclusive institution.

Another key focus of mine has been advocating for streamlining the number of nominees recognized across our awards. This push has helped increase clarity for the public, relevance in the industry, and alignment with our mission to honor the very best in film and television — not simply the most visible.

Looking ahead, I am committed to continuing efforts that bring even more credibility, fairness, and trust to our organization. That includes proposing and advocating for an official board vote to bring in an independent accounting firm to oversee all nominations and winners. This step will safeguard our integrity and ensure our selections remain beyond reproach.

Just as importantly, I will continue encouraging all members to see as many eligible films and series as possible prioritizing the full range of artistic achievements over simply trying to predict or reflect what other groups may do. We should lead, not follow.

Thank you for considering my candidacy. I believe in the mission of the Critics Choice Association and will continue working to ensure it reflects the best of what we do as critics, journalists, and champions of entertainment.

It’s again time for us to go into our special version of Conclave, where we put our best foot forward and hope that when the white smoke rises, we will be able to once again serve the membership and continue efforts to improve our organization. I’ve been told by plenty of people I remind them of Stanley Tucci. Anyway.

My hopes for and efforts in this organization remain similar: transparency between the board and members, providing added value to your membership, and making you feel heard and acknowledged when you have ideas or concerns.

Four years ago, I created your CCA newsletter, and I take joy in writing it every week with our leadership team. It is packed with important points of information, news on our many events, and perhaps most importantly, our continuous initiatives to support you, like the newly-launched CCA podcast network and the recently-restarted Membership Empowerment Series. 

This time around, our biggest achievement as a board is the creation of the Membership Action Committee spearheaded by fellow board member Jacqueline Coley, which I was proud to support and help get off the ground. This is one of the biggest innovations in recent CCA history, giving members a direct line to leadership so real change can happen, straight from you to the board. Your concerns over receiving board minutes, as well as collaborating on the reboot of the Seal of Female Empowerment in Entertainment (Sofee) both happened because of the MAC, with much more to come.

I’m proud to be a member, and even prouder to have served on the board for two terms. In Conclave, they speak about how certainty isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. So as a board member, I’ll instead say that I have faith the CCA is full of hardworking people making the organization the best it can be, and I’d like to continue being one of them. Now let’s go enjoy a Bellini.

First off I want to say congratulations to every member of the Critics Choice Association. I also would like to say keep up the great work that each of you do in covering the movie and television industry. The industry is dramatically changing and it has never been more difficult to be a professional journalist than it is today. We are all in this because we have a passion and love for movies and television. However, due to changing economic and cultural climates covering movies and television has become increasingly more difficult. Nevertheless, we all remain undeterred and I just want to say let’s keep pushing forward and together we will keep fighting. With that said, it is my hope that I can once again represent you as a board member. 

As a current board member now finishing my third term I want to express my gratitude to everyone who had the confidence and belief in my leadership skills to serve you. And as I embark on a fourth term I am asking for your trust and confidence again. Being reelected will allow me to continue to lead the organization into the future with ideas and results that benefit both the CCA and its members.

As a board member during my previous term I focused on several critical issues that have positively impacted the CCA and helped establish the organization as the most credible body of film and television critics in the world. 

I’m proud that the Celebration events, an idea that I created back in 2013 have seen tremendous growth under the direction of Madelyn Hammond and Javier Infante. Creating the concept is something that I am extremely proud of and watching it grow has been a professional highlight. The CCA now produces four (Black, Latino, AAPI and LGBTQ+) Celebration events. These events represent the CCA’s diverse membership and allows the organization to honor actors and filmmakers that represent a multitude of ethnicities and lifestyles that often get overlooked.

In officially working on the CCA social media team I have assisted Lisa Waters, Natasha Gargiulo and Jared Berlin in creating tremendous growth across every platform with strategic implementation, creative initiatives and brand building. My primary focus has been elevating the CCA Youtube channel. I have been instrumental in developing and creating content for the broadcast platform with original content like “In Conversation,” and pushing for the importance of livestreams, red carpet coverage and more original content. The number of subscribers has grown and views per video are up. 

My latest initiative under the social media umbrella has been the creation of the CCA Podcast Network. The network was created to showcase the vast amount of talent within the membership and push the organization into the rapidly growing world of podcasting. The goal being that the CCA Podcast Network offers the best and most diverse film and television discourse anywhere. It is also a great way highlight members and brand the organization in a different and rapidly influential space. 

During my next term, if elected, I want to focus on the concerns of members based in mid-sized and small markets like myself (Kansas City) who are increasingly struggling with obtaining access to screenings and talent. I actively communicate with the studios and streamers about these issues. It’s a priority that we must resolve. I also want concentrate more on developing a stronger presence with our marketing and promotions of each award show the CCA produces particularly the Critics Choice Awards. It is my hopes that the show becomes a household name and eventually eclipses the Golden Globes and Academy Awards as the gold standard of award shows. 

And lastly it is my goal to always generate and create ideas that not only benefit the organization but also the members.

Thanks in advance for your support and I hope I receive your vote. It is much appreciated. 

Many CCA members may already know me from our various interactions, either online or in real life at events like the annual CCDAs, or even from my involvement in the CCDA and Super Awards nomcoms, which I’ve been involved with from the beginning of both.

For those who don’t know me, I’ve been writing and doing video reviews and filmmaker/actor interviews for a variety of outlets since 2001, covering a wide variety of film genres, including documentaries, foreign films, and smaller indies. I’m currently freelancing but I’ve been reviewing movies under the moniker of “The Weekend Warrior” for nearly 25 years.

I have very specific reasons why I’m running for the CCA Board, which I’d like to share with anyone taking the time to read this. I generally like the way the CCA has been run in my 13+ years as a member, and I hope to continue making this one of the premier critics/awards groups in the world. I’m especially pleased with the way the CCA has been at the forefront of diversity and equality in terms of membership, and I’d like to keep that going even if I’m just another white male critic. I do think I would bring a lot of new ideas to the group, including more ways that the membership from across the globe can communicate with each other, since that sort of camaraderie should be one of the benefits of being a CCA member.

I’d also like to try to make things a bit more even and fair for some of our freelance and independent critics in the group. Let’s face the fact that most of the entertainment outlets are owned by one or two corporations. While corporations can be good for a few things (like buying tables at awards shows), I feel that places like Rotten Tomatoes (owned by one such corporation) are making such a big deal about diversity and equality while creating a very unfair system for those of us who work hard to provide reviews for our readers/viewers but might not have the corporate clout of others. 

Another thing I hope to bring to the Board is that I would like to be the voice of frugality, where maybe some costs can be cut. I know that the current government has been doing a lot of shady things to cut costs, but there’s a good point to keep things on budget, and maybe someone can look at how money is being spent in CCA to ensure that there is money for important things that the membership would like to get behind.

I will say for the record that I have not been a fan of the way MAC has been run — no shade meant for Jacqueline, who has done as good a job as can be expected without having much direction — and part of my involvement, if I’m elected, will be to create a better way for members to interact with the Board, which includes the transparency that a few members have requested. It might be as simple as having a “suggestion box” where members can provide ideas for the Board to consider. 

I hope you’ll consider my words and know that I do not take the position of helping to run CCA lightly. This is a group I’ve loved being part of for the past 14 years, mainly because I enjoy interacting with other members, as much as having pride in what CCA has achieved and what it means to the industry as a whole.

Thanks for reading this.

My name is Sean O’Connell. I’m currently a Deputy Editor for CBR, after leaving my longtime position as Managing Editor of CinemaBlend. I have been a proud CCA member for decades, and have served the organization in multiple roles. 

I first ran for the Board of Directors in 2017, believing the digital side of film criticism needed better representation on the board. Once elected, I worked closely with Mark Ramsey and Sara Voorhees to modify membership criteria to fit the needs of a digital age. Websites, podcasts, YouTube channels and more were given increased attention, helping to expand and diversify the CCA’s ranks to better include online and digital media.

Once re-elected in 2019, I took over the SUPER AWARDS, the CCA program dedicated to honoring genre filmmaking.Year after year, the SUPER AWARDS recognize the best and brightest in Action, Horror, Science-Fiction and Comic Book cinema. We celebrate many of the films that moviegoers care about most, while also shining a bright light on genres that get overlooked during the traditional Awards season. It has been my absolute pleasure to work with many of you on the SUPER AWARDS Nomination Committees, and it’s my hope the membership re-elects me so I can continue the mission.

My responsibilities at CCA have changed several times over the years – from programming Member-contributed content for ReelRave, to updating the CCA Junket Calendar, which served as a bridge between Studios and our membership to keep junketeers up to speed on upcoming junkets. I take pride in the fact that I’ve remained flexible, accepting challenges that meet the needs of the membership, and working to make your jobs easier.

Serving on the Board is a distinction I don’t take lightly. I’m proud to be part of the conversations that have led to positive changes in the CCA telecast, the on-site experience the night of the show, and the creation and evolution of so many of our Celebration ceremonies. I’m extremely proud of the work we have done on the SUPER AWARDS, and will continue to do as the program gains in stature. And I’m excited to find new ways to contribute to the strengthening of the critical community, whether it be by discovering new voices in our industry, or amplifying the ones who already are part of our membership. 

Thank you, in advance, for your consideration. 

What is a mission? In this case, my mission would be to continue aiding membership in bridging the gap between traditional and digital journalists within our organization.

Documentary film is my kryptonite, and I could devour many titles in one sitting, which is why serving as Co-President of our Documentary Branch for the past two years was especially fulfilling. Working alongside Christopher Campbell, the Impact Award was established where we honored award winning filmmaker Dawn Porter (“Trapped’,” “Luther: Never Too Much,” “John Lewis: Good Trouble”), while ensuring that the Doc Awards came out of the shadows as the step child of CCA with a more vibrant red carpet/social media presence overall.   Our NomCom Zoom meetings were created to invigorate conversation amongst our committee to discuss and deliberate our potential nominees for the Doc Awards and were a huge hit!

In addition to serving on the Real TV Awards and Documentary Award NomCom committees, it was my suggestion to develop an app for awards season to cut the hundreds of passwords and links clogging up email inboxes. This process has proven to be remarkably successful and the perfect beginning to bridging the gap.

Going into this next chapter, it is my desire to continue the path of creating a more transparent and supportive organization, while simultaneously creating access opportunities for members in secondary markets that are not major media hubs like Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. As well as encourage more global support of our woman critics across television and film. 

Thank you in advance to taking the time to read my statement and it is my sincere hope to be able to work with and for as many members as possible to ensure that our spirits are uplifted and amplified during a time when our journalistic integrity and voices are trying to be silenced.  I stand with you ALL now and ALWAYS.

Hello Fellow Critics Choice Association Members,

~ ~The Short of it~ ~

My name is Derek Sante. I have been helping CCA members for 18 years and taking this seat will allow me to take this service to the next level. I will see that members get more invaluable opportunities and help to make the association and brand flourish in many different ways.

~ ~The Long of it~ ~

I’ve had the opportunity and honor to meet many of you at CCA Events, on red carpets or at festivals. This year I am submitting myself for a seat with the Board of Directors. Helping fellow Critics and the CCA is my goal, but by no means has this been a new one for me.

Whether you are aware of it or not, I have been working to help members and the association for 18 years. 

Some of the things I have helped create, institute and grow include:

• Membership Empowerment: I am a Founding Member of this movement to provide you, the Critics with tools you can use to succeed. Our topics vary, but our goal of empowerment and growth. I have proudly been a part of the technology, hosting, planning and conversation for every episode.  
• CCA Facebook Group: I established the need for a Facebook group and helped create its structure so CCA members could better share information, opportunities and issues. And even though I turned it over to the board after creation, it still grows and is used by members daily.
• Film Festival Liasson: Leading the charge for members on the ground at film festivals, I have put the call out through the FB group and in newsletters to create a comprehensive list of members attending and covering these events. From there I actively shared it with studios, agencies and publicity leads to get our members invites and opportunities that might have passed them by. 

______

When it comes to my group involvement, I have worked hard to be part of the conversation and team to make CCA’s voice and brand shine.

• Marketing & Promotion Committee: I have been an active member of the M&P committee since its inception. I have been working to build and spotlight CCA and its events for years.
• Nominating Committees for Awards: It’s been my pleasure to be part of numerous nomination committees over the years. Giving my time and attention to help nominate the best options for CCA members to select.
• Celebration of Latino Film & Television Awards: I worked to create grounded ideas and goals to grow this amazing show.

These are just a few of the key points highlighting my years of involvement and service to CCA and its members. I have open, available and ready to help. 

__________

As for what I plan to do once appointed to the board, that’s simple. I plan to make things better for members and leadership. I have some of the most useful mix of skills needed for this position. I am a logistical person based in reality with extensive experience in Marketing, Promotions, Sales, Publicity and Technology. 

My appointment to the board will help the following:

• Member Information: I will give equal consideration to the members and the needs of the Critics Choice brand. I will make sure that the association is heard and informed in a timely manner. We work in communications; we can always be better at this.
• Member Opportunities: I will look for options to make being a member a more-positive and helpful experience. This is something I have been passionate about for many years. As we know, better access leads to more opportunities.
• Sales and Sponsorship: This is an area that needs constant attention. Someone has to pay for our amazing events. My goal will be to expand this category, while still holding our professional journalistic integrity.
• Marketing: I have relationships many brands and agencies outside of the critic norm as well as the entertainment industry. The demographic of CCA, its members and its followers is key to many hopeful campaigns and partnerships.
• Technology: I have the skills and knowledge to use technology to give the association more options and better opportunities with events, structure, communication and day-to-day operations. In addition to my current video and audio production, I have an extensive background in website building and SEO tactics. 

I have held many titles in the past including Director, Editor, Regional Marketing Manager, Executive Producer and Consultant. I understand the need for different roles and types of teamwork. I will work with the board to do what’s best for the members and the association and lend my expertise and voice to a stronger Critics Choice Association.