Jody Santos (she/her) is the founding executive director and editor-in-chief at the Disability Justice Project. A human rights filmmaker, she has traveled to some 30 countries across five continents, documenting everything from the trafficking of girls in Nepal to the widespread and often abusive practice of institutionalizing children with disabilities in the U.S. and other countries. Her documentaries have appeared on public television and cable networks like the Discovery Channel, and her work has also been featured on New England Public Radio and in regional and national publications like The Boston Globe and Poynter. Regardless of the medium, Santos’s goal has been to highlight those narratives that are usually unseen or underreported.

Santos is the recipient of American Women in Radio & Television’s Gracie Allen Award, and she was nominated for an Emmy for a special report on black-market guns airing on NBC Boston. Her documentary, Rising Tides, Raising Voices, has screened at festivals worldwide, earning accolades such as Best International Film at The Together! 2024 Disability Film Festival organized by the UK Disabled People’s Council. In 2024, the film was featured on International Day of Persons with Disabilities at UNESCO’s inaugural Festival of Short Films on Disability Inclusion in Paris and at a screening in Rome hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO). In 2025, it won the Justice category of the 2025 Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards, co-founded by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation.

Santos is an associate teaching professor at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism. She is the author of Daring to Feel: Violence, the News Media, and Their Emotions, published by Rowman & Littlefield’s Lexington Books.