Cara Mertes is Director of JustFilms at Ford Foundation, supporting socially engaged independent films and emerging media, strengthening organizations and networks for independent moving image content, and cultivating new resources and inclusive talent pipelines.

Throughout her career as a non-profit executive, producer/director and funder, Cara has championed artists as leaders, and worked to harness the power of the moving image arts to strengthen civil society, create transformative narratives and accelerate progressive change. At Ford Foundation, she and her team have funded over 300 films, worked to build a more inclusive independent media field and launched the JustFilms Global Network, a major five-year initiative supporting a network of global north and global south organizations to create an international independent film network. Prior, Cara served for eight years as director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and Fund. While there, she greatly expanded lab offerings and granting funds and partnered to co-found catalytic initiatives including Good Pitch, an event and training model produced by DocSociety, and the 'Stories of Change' initiative with the Skoll Foundation.

Prior to that, Cara was executive producer of the PBS documentary series POV, and Executive Director of American Documentary, Inc. She led a major expansion of POV/American Documentary, producing an annual prime time series and PBS specials that brought dozens of award-winning films to public television viewers. She received multiple Emmy Awards, George Foster Peabody Awards, and duPont-Columbia Awards and was awarded a Webby Award for creating and producing PBS' inaugural web series, POV’s Borders. She was executive producer of several Academy Award-nominated films, including Street Fight, Nerakhoon: Betrayal, and My Country, My Country.

Cara is member of WGA East, AMPAS and NATAS, and has been recognized with an IDA Award for her leadership at Sundance Institute, DocNYC's Leading Light Award and HotDocs Doc Mogul Award.