Gerta Xhelo

Director of Production, TED-Ed

Gerta Xhelo has dedicated her 15+ year career to recruiting independent filmmakers and producing meaningful stories across platforms, styles, and genres, giving artists around the world opportunity, exposure, and creative freedom in service of a larger message. Gerta is the current Director of Production at TED-Ed and the Co-Founder of Tomato Beach, an independent creative production studio in NYC. Since joining in 2013, she has had the immense pleasure of co-curating and overseeing the visual and editorial production of 1000+ animated short films which have reached over 1.5 billion views worldwide and have been featured in dozens of animation festivals, including Annecy, Animafest Zagreb, Anima Mundi, ASIFA, etc. Prior to TED-Ed, she recruited and developed talent for The Mill, a global leader in visual effects. She is also a professor at The School of Visual Arts and Pratt University where she teaches young artists career strategies.