About Us

Dr. Marsh has spent most of his adult life in either the classroom, in the studio, or on the stage. His childhood piano lessons led him to the Berklee College of Music where he received a scholarship to study with the world-renowned vibraphonist, Gary Burton. After leaving Boston he moved to Miami to attend the University of Miami. This decision led to many years of higher education which resulted in degrees in education, music production, and composition, all while recording or performing internationally with his own band, Nori Nori, or working on a variety of other artists’ projects.

He is the executive director and co-founder of ASFI (After School Film Institute), a non-profit organization that teaches every aspect of the filmmaking process to the youth in underserved communities of South Florida. He is also Director of Film and Television at Miami Arts Studio, and still actively composes, records, and performs. He sits on the board of Film Florida and the Film and Entertainment advisory board for Miami-Dade county. He has been awarded many professional accolades, having been either the winner or a finalist for teacher of the year at the local, regional, and state levels.

Ronald Baez is a Caribbean-American screenwriter, director, and award-winning immersive media artist from Miami, FL. His current and previous short film projects continue to screen at film festivals and museums worldwide including HBO’s New York Latino Film Festival, the Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival, the Oscar-Qualifying Florida and Short Shorts (Tokyo) Film Festivals, the Norton Museum of Art, and the Florida Museum of Natural History. Several of Baez’s short film projects have also been distributed for national television broadcast by PBS as well as online by Seed&Spark SVOD.

Baez’s award-winning immersive media projects have been exhibited at the 2020 MIT Reality XR Hackathon, the Florida Museum of National History, and the National Association of Broadcasters Conference (NAB Show). Baez was awarded the NAB Futures Innovator’s Award in 2019 for his ongoing VR projects in collaboration with the University of Florida MET Lab. Baez continues to work with organizations and institutions like National Geographic, the University of Florida, the Adrienne Arscht Center, the New World Symphony, the Sea Turtle Conservancy, and the Knight Foundation on a variety of immersive and interactive media projects.

In addition to his work as a filmmaker and immersive media artist, Baez is a founding member of the White Elephant Group, a Miami-based filmmaking collective, and also serves as the Artistic Director of the After School Film Institute, a nonprofit organization mentoring at risk, inner-city students in South Florida.

Florencia Portieri is an Argentinian film director, cinematographer, and editor, currently residing in Miami, Florida. After receiving her BFA from the New York Film Academy, Portieri has gone on to helm several high-profile projects in her capacity as a Director of Photography and 1st Assistant Camera. Films composed by her eye have screened in world-class film festivals, museums exhibition spaces around the world, including HBO’s New York Latino Film Festival, the New Orleans, Miami, Florida, Trinidad & Tobago, and Short Shorts (Tokyo) Film Festivals, to name some. Her work has also been exhibited at the Adrienne Arsht Center, the Norton Museum of Art, and the Doral Contemporary Art Museum. Her most recent work, a short hybrid documentary titled “You Were Never Really Here” had its world premiere at the Academy Award-qualifying Slamdance Film Festival in January 2024.

Aside from her work as a filmmaker, Portieri serves as a Senior Mentoring Artist with the After School Film Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization dedicated to mentoring at-risk youth and engaging the arts to service historically underserved communities throughout South Florida, where she is being named the first female Artistic Director in Summer 2024. She is also a Senior Contributing Artist at the White Elephant Group (WEG), a Miami-based film and digital media collective elevating and platforming the voices of minority stories and storytellers.