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In 1994, after a career spent mostly in corporate America, Jeff Seder (MBA '74, JD '76) began to feel that his life lacked purpose. "I was a burned-out, sold-out '60s leftover," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer (September 13, 2001). "I was restless and bored." Seder had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa before attending HBS; thinking back to that time made him want to do "something useful and outrageous" once again.
Particularly concerned about violence among young people, Seder decided that he wanted to "make a commitment to at-risk youth." At the time, he was chairman of an industrial fabrics firm in Pennsylvania, but prior to that, he had run a departmentstore chain in Southern California and had friends and contacts in the movie industry. With their help, in 1994 Seder founded the Big Picture Alliance (BPA), an organization that brings together film professionals, businesspeople, and teachers to help urban teens make films about some of the serious issues—drugs, violence, love, sex, gangs, and poverty—they face.
"Our film apprenticeship programs have a track record of getting teens, including troubled teens who are currently enrolled in alternative facilities, interested in school programs and real-world job skills," Seder observed. "It is meant to lure them into filmmaking. Kids discuss the films and have to think of a way that is real and mature to get out of bad situations."
Since BPA was formed, more than five hundred youths between the age of 15 and 20 have been involved in some fifty films, some of which have won awards at major film festivals and been broadcast on public television.
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