Doe Mayer

Doe Mayer is an American filmmaker, academic, and author. She is the inaugural holder of the Mary Pickford Chair in Film and Television Production as well as Professor Emerita of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.

She is known for her contributions to the field of entertainment-education and the strategic use of media to address global health, gender equity, and community activism.

Early life and education Mayer received her film training from New York University, the University of Southern California, and the American Film Institute (AFI). She initially pursued a career in feature films, working as a researcher on large Hollywood productions such as Shampoo (1975) and The China Syndrome (1979).

Upon returning to the United States, Mayer joined the faculty at USC in the School of Cinematic Arts. She was the first woman on tenure track in the production division, where she taught beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels of film production, specializing in documentary. She ran the graduate documentary program and introduced courses on creative filmmaking, media and social change, and women in the motion picture industries.

Throughout her production career, Mayer has produced and directed films that promote social change. In 1990, she produced Vukani Mukai, Awakening to encourage Zimbabwean women to get training in organizing small-scale income-generating projects. In The Women Will (Wanawake Watatunza), she documented the journey and impact of the Kenya Rural Area Women's Project in empowering and supporting rural Kenyan women through training, cultural exchanges, community workshops, and the development of grassroots projects. In Competent Women, Caring Men: Images that Inspire, she explored how mass media can transform traditional gender roles by portraying strong, capable women and nurturant men, and how it can influence societal behavior through entertainment-based education.

She created a documentary on women learning to use computers in a tsunami-affected region of the Indian state of Kerala.

Mayer has done extensive work in the Hispanic community of Los Angeles. In 2023, she coauthored "Evaluation of an Audio-Visual Novela to Improve COVID-19 Knowledge and Safe Practices Among Spanish-Speaking Individuals with Schizophrenia", published in the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health.

In Los Angeles, she produced two videos—The Tamale Lesson and It's Time—which promoted Pap tests and the HPV vaccine, exploring the impact of narrative and fact-based approaches in health communication. She produced three short web video profiles as part of the Immigrant Health Initiative at USC, documenting health issues faced by immigrant families. As co-principal investigator for the La Clave project, a communication outreach campaign directed to the Latino community in Los Angeles, she produced La Clave, aiming to help Latino viewers recognize signs of psychosis in family members and get them prompt assistance. Her book with Jed Dannenbaum (her late husband) and Carroll Hodge, Creative Filmmaking from the Inside Out focuses on how students can improve their work, generate a story concept, set up lighting on a set, edit a scene, or choose the right music. A study she did with Barbara Pillsbury examined the effectiveness of women's NGOs in addressing sexual and reproductive health problems, the use of media and technology in these efforts, and the importance of collaboration and shared knowledge. She has highlighted the power of culturally specific narrative videos in communicating health programs and beneficial interventions, emphasizing the effectiveness of storytelling rather than providing didactic information.

Across her work, Mayer has consistently underscored the effectiveness of culturally specific narrative media in health communication campaigns, arguing that storytelling rather than didactic, statistics-driven messaging is key to engaging audiences and changing behavior. 2010 – Fulbright Senior Specialist Award, University of Melbourne 2013 – Promotion Award for The Tamale Lesson and It's Time, American Public Health Association 2015 – Mellon Mentoring Award, University of Southern California