Before you know it, effusive, ebullient, energetic Maya, of the good-natured, often humorous touch, has moved your project to successful completion usually right on or under-budget. Maya’s unique knack for defusing tension, making progress, and jealously guarding the treasure chest comes from her experience and training in film production, a passion she fueled, when, like her illustrious namesake and distant relative, Sir Francis Bacon, she spent important formative years studying in France and England. From the University de Marseilles III in Aix-en-Provence, she moved on to London’s University of Richmond (where she produced documentaries for the BBC), then, as she puts it, she, "Begged her way" into the ultra-elite University of Wisconsin Film School.

Whence this affability, this ability to make a roomful of egos play nice, and, most definitely, this underlying toughness? We look to her unique combination of city and country attributes: in her easy going way she brooks no b nonsense. And, of course, there was her upbringing on a Minnesota commune, where people learn very early to get along, or to get going. Plus, growing up with approximately 60,000,000,000,000,000 mosquitoes, you develop a thick yet to all appearances, damaskaskin.