Aaron Dennis

Aaron Dennis is a Michigan Emmy–winning filmmaker with more than twenty years of experience making humanitarian and educational films around the world. His work is built on going to the places he films and staying long enough that the people in them are the ones telling the story.

In 2012 he partnered with On the Ground to film and direct The People and The Olive: The Story of the Run Across Palestine, which followed ultra-runners across the West Bank as they ran in support of Palestinian olive farmers. He also directed Connected by Coffee, a documentary tracing the lives and livelihoods of fair-trade coffee farmers across Latin America — a film that has been widely used as an education tool within the specialty coffee industry.

Aaron is the founder of Stone Hut Studios in Traverse City, established in 2011. With his team there he has produced hundreds of films for nonprofits, institutions, and mission-driven companies, with a consistent emphasis on social and environmental justice.

On the board, he brings both the storytelling capacity On the Ground has relied on for over a decade and firsthand experience of the projects themselves, having documented them in Palestine and in coffee-growing communities across the Americas.