About Me
I share what I know. I am part of the whole means choosing to offer my experience, my craft, and my perspective to younger generations. This is my place in the circle of life—teaching what has been entrusted to me until, in that exchange, I become whole. I teach videomaking and a voice-led wellness practice to help people become more aware of disability, connection, and the worlds we move through.
My name is Gisela Sanders Alcántara. I am a Mexican storyteller, a NYC resident, a mother, a wife, a TV producer, an educator, a disability activist, an ecologist, a voice-led meditation instructor, and a former performer—a dancer and an actor.
For more than three decades, I’ve worked across film and television as a producer, director, videographer, and editor in both Mexico and New York City. My early work in Mexico included collaborations with UTE, ILCE, Canal Once, TV UNAM, and Filmoteca de la UNAM. In New York, my path led me first to WNYC and then to more than twenty years at CUNY TV, my creative home. There, I helped launch the iconic series Nueva York, produced I Am a Dreamer, and currently I edit Sustainability Matters. As of October 2023, my work as a TV storyteller has been honored with 13 NY-Emmy Awards.
My films have traveled widely, screening at international festivals such as Guadalajara, Morelia, Los Angeles, DocsMX, Havana, L’Alternativa, and Contra el Silencio Todas las Voces. They’ve also been featured at major cultural institutions including El Museo del Barrio, MoMA, and The Guggenheim.
Alongside this work, I am the creator of Disability Reflections, a community-based storytelling and film workshop that invites disabled and non-disabled participants to explore disability as a continuum we all move through. Through guided storytelling, self-representation, and collaborative filmmaking, the program helps participants reclaim narrative power, build self-worth, and spark new conversations about disability in their communities. Disability entered my life when I became a mother, expanding my understanding of my own neurodivergence and that of my family. Since then, I’ve committed myself to creating disability awareness rooted in lived experience, creativity, and community. In a world where disability is often framed through a heavy medical lens, I believe in a more expansive form of healing—one that includes you, me, us, and the Earth.
In recent years, I’ve been sharing Voz, a voice-led meditation practice that has brought profound balance into my life and connection to the Earth. Practiced individually or in groups—both in person and remotely—it invites us to sense the vibrational nature of the world. Guided by my teacher, Virginia Gascon who taught me her technique Voz Esencial, I’ve developed an intuitive relationship with my voice and its potential for grounding, expression, and healing.
For me, healing work emerges through storytelling, and meditation. I strive to integrate all of it—every part of who I am. I’m a creative thinker who loves facilitating collaboration and shaping narratives that speak to the human spirit.