Today we’d like to introduce you to Josh Merwin.
Hi Josh, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My goal as a child was to be a Sports Illustrated photographer. While attending the University of Colorado, I was a volunteer photo assistant at the Sydney Olympics. This led to becoming a photo assistant to a Sports Illustrated photographer for major events like the Super Bowl and the Salt Lake City Olympics. After graduating, I started freelancing for Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine and the Houston Chronicle. While looking for an interesting and impactful story on an athlete off the field I found Carson Kainer, a University of Texas baseball player, who needed a kidney transplant to save his life and allow him to chase his dream of playing professional baseball.
I documented Kainer and his family for over 10 years. Hoping to make a major impact for organ donor awareness, I knew I needed a platform to generate awareness for not only the film, but also the importance of organ donation. I realized one main issue… there was not a major sports film festival in the U.S. Knowing there were more filmmakers like myself that needed a festival platform to launch their projects, I decided to start a sports film festival in his hometown of Houston as it was the perfect location to launch this endeavor. In addition to supporting organ donation, the ISFFH (International Sports Film & Festival) will have tracks of programming that will highlight important topics in the world of sports. We will use film as an educational tool to help carry on the conversation with the festival in 2022 and beyond.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It’s definitely not been a smooth road. We launched June 2021, in the middle of Covid. We originally picked that date because the World Transplant Games were supposed to be held in Houston at the same time, giving us a built in audience. The games got cancelled due to Covid and we avoid a potential flood as well to get the games off the ground. For 2022, I decided to space our programming out throughout the year, so we could avoid any obstacles that come up. This proved to be a very smart move when Covid spiked in December 2021/January 2022 as it allowed us to still have our screenings while moving certain elements around to later in the year. Other struggles were building a reliable team around myself, that makes my job easier. I have had quite a few people not follow through on what they promised to do, so that is very frustrating and puts more on my shoulders than I can really handle at times.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I think my creativity and my ability to know what people will connect with sets me apart from others. Whether it’s film, photography, art or just thinking outside the box in general, I tend to come up with unique solutions by thinking differently. I’m also very good a telling a story and love just having the freedom to be creative.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
Scalability. Everything is scalable, it’s very simple, but we often forget that.
Pricing:
- $5000 donation levels
Contact Info:
- Email: josh@joshmerwin.com
- Website: ISFFH.org
- Instagram: ISFFH_org
- Facebook: ISFFH_org
- Twitter: ISFFH_org
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-oen4_sMb4Lwkc6OKVpUIA/featured
