Internet, it’s high time that you meet Jake Hamilton’s (cinematographer and owner of One Spark Films) partner in crime, Greg Kwedar.

The two have been on a serious life roller coaster ride for the last year, and I’m sure that if you’d have asked Greg a year and a half ago what he’d be doing today, there would have been no way he would have predicted his current situation.

Greg (and Jake) just finished up and submitted his new short film, Guest Room, to the Doorpost Short Film competition, which ended two weeks ago. They took home the Filmmaker’s Choice award for best representing the spirit of the doorpost in their work and character and are approaching the one-year anniversary of the launch of One Spark.

Greg is the oh-so-capable writer and director for One Spark Films, but when I heard about Greg, I was initially intrigued by his passion and work with non-profits, including the non-profit that he was starting with some very talented people.

We met up at Spider House so I could get the scoop. I knew Greg immediately, mainly because he walked in alone and was searching the dive patrons for a girl he had never met. But I also recognized him as he tick-tocked into the bar on a cool September night because our previous correspondence had revealed a warm, heartfelt person whose interior is appropriately matched by his resemblance to a teddy bear.

We dove right into discussing his project. Waking the World, the provisional name of his non-profit (all will be set in stone within a few months), is a non-profit resource for other non-profits. That’s a lot of non-profit, but seriously, Greg told me the premise behind Waking the World is “essentially, to offer affordable financial strategy and media production to non-profits as a non-profit.”

It’s a revolutionary service that strives to bring together talented, passionate individuals who believe that collectively they can “make the biggest impact on the world by using their expertise to help non-profits rather than doing non-profit work unrelated to their individual strengths.”

Waking the World is the product of years of both intentional and unintentional choices that Greg made regarding his career and his character. It all started the day Greg was born. Just kidding. We won’t go back that far, but Greg’s childhood, especially his education, significantly shaped his outlook on life.

Greg grew up in Ft. Worth, Texas. He was always a stubborn kid with a one-track mind. He recalled one episode before soccer practice when, “My dad told me to get dressed so I went into my room, but I came back out asking for some string so that I could tie my fake gun to the back of my bike to make a rocket ship. I did this four times with less and less patient redirection from my dad until I finally donned my practice clothes.”

While Greg’s dad did not think it was so hilarious then, this story has now become his token dinner party anecdote and Greg likes to think of it as evidence of his level of commitment—dedicated despite all distractions. He jumps in headfirst and full steam ahead when he has his mind made up.

Laughing, he also recalled his dreams of entering the medical field. “I was convinced that I would be a doctor someday so I literally operated on my stuffed animals. I cut open my Garfield, stuffed something into him, and sewed him back up.”

That dedication was reinforced through his school, Trinity Valley, and more specifically through his head master from whom Greg learned valuable life lessons at an early age. His head master, a Hungary native, emigrated to America and started a school in his attic that later became Trinity Valley. His example showed Greg that hard work and dedication lead to success.

Greg’s head master also encouraged individualism and encouraged his students to think for themselves. Greg recalled the story that his head master told every senior class. “He grew up in Hungary and his father was part of the Nazi-resistance party. His father took them to a Nazi rally to quote, ‘Show them what evil looked like.’ As they were at the rally, my head master said he remembers watching his father the whole time. His father became so caught up in the moment, in the charisma of the speaker and the emotions of the crowd that at the end of the rally, his father, a resistance leader, stood up, arm raised high shouting, ‘Heil Hitler!’ He went on to tell us to change the world in one’s or two’s retaining the pieces of ourselves that make us who we are.”

It is the combination of his commitment and individualism that forces him to be very intentional about the big life choices, like college and his career. When it came time to decide on college, Greg’s commitment was to athletics and his one-track mind was focused on playing rugby. To that end, he decided to attend Texas A&M.

Greg honestly thought that he would end up playing professional rugby for his career. It wasn’t unreasonable. His high school rugby team won the National Championship. So Greg spent two summers “playing with semi-professional teams in New Zealand and Australia and dedicated a lot of time improving his rugby skills.”

For his major, he selected the ever practical and stable business accounting. He had always loved film and was drawn to its art, but he always thought of its practice as something unattainable, “It was the silver screen. It was out of my reach and the odds of making a living were not necessarily promising, and besides, I was going to play rugby.”

But something wasn’t right and Greg felt it. He uncovered one piece of the puzzle when he went down to Nuevo Laredo with his rugby team to do some service work. He fell in love with the people and the kids in the orphanage where they worked. “They wrecked me,” he admitted.

From then on he knew that he had a passion to serve non-profits so he “started a non-profit shortly after called the Full Hearts Foundation, that exists to provide educational opportunities and lasting relationships with children living in poverty in Nuevo Laredo.”

Because of his demonstrated passion for non-profits, he was invited to join a dinner party, one intentionally fateful night, with a group of very driven, talented people who were gathering at the home of a dear friend. With great foresight, this friend, Rachel Toppert, purposefully brought these people together to see what would happen if a brilliant and talented group put their brains together over a wonderful four-course meal.

The result of the night and several dinners to follow was the beginning of Waking the World. While they were not quite sure how the non-profit would function, the group believed that they could have the biggest impact on the world by using their specific gifts to help non-profits.

Greg explained it to me like this: “I could go down to central America and help a group build a house, but as soon as I try to nail a board, it would break in two. I’m just not handy. I could get the job done, but it wouldn’t be the greatest use of my time or talent. But give me a video camera and I can use my expertise to create a film that will make the world more aware of that organization. Using my specific talent—that’s how I can really change the world.”

It’s not exactly rocket science, but the potential for real impact multiplies significantly when you place people in non-profit work that suits their natural abilities. Remember that at this point Greg’s love and talent for film are still just starry-eyed dreams, but all this talk about natural ability got Greg thinking about his career path.

Greg began to realize that maybe he wasn’t so sure about pursuing his accounting major. He remained committed to that path for the year, but was internally conflicted about his future. So he “went down to Australia to spend the summer reading, writing and finding myself. I know it sounds cliché, but I was literally by myself all day long; I’d have long conversations with myself.”

While there he was instinctively drawn to the film industry and worked on various sets throughout the summer. “I didn’t care what I was doing—running up and down stairs, handing out snickers bars—I just had so much energy being on set. And it made me feel alive.”

Despite this confirmed love for film and great amounts of uncertainty, Greg returned to College Station intending to finish up his senior year of rugby and his accounting degree. While playing a rugby match, Greg wrecked his ankle. He didn’t have the heart to rehab the ankle because he knew that his plan to play rugby professionally was no longer his dream.

On top of this huge shift in perspective, he was met with another striking realization. During one of his exams in his Financial Reporting class, he retold, “I stopped for a minute to rest my eyes. I was doing just fine on the exam, but as I sat there I became aware of the pencils tapping around the room in unison. And it got louder and louder and louder. I had to get out so I turned in my test and walked out the door. I cried in the parking lot, called my father, and was done with accounting from that day forward, just 6 hours short of my degree.”

Greg recognizes this decision as another turning point. With no prospects to play rugby and a clear aversion to accounting, he knew his actions had committed him to pursuing a film career. But just as you would expect from someone as dedicated as Greg, he dove right in, changed his major to marketing, and applied to NYU for film school.

Upon graduation from A&M, he and his friends bought an old 1973 Cortez Bus (that was a former traveling puppet show) and decided to drive it south to Guatemala, or as far as it would go, while helping out nonprofits and missions in the towns they passed through.

Greg learned a valuable lesson that might sound familiar to you if you’ve seen his latest film, Guest Room. “Life on the road accelerates relationships,” Greg told me. “My best friend and I got into a huge fight. It was over directions. It seemed insignificant, but it was the culmination of months of things unsaid and bottled up. We didn’t speak for two months. We decided to go our separate ways, literally. He and one of our buddies drove the van back to Texas while I continued to head south with another friend.”

But as Greg found out life on the road doesn’t only accelerate relationships; it accelerated his desire to work with non-profits. Greg did reach Guatemala and got connected with a non-profit called Safe Passage, a non-profit organization that provides school enrollment and after-school support for poor children whose families scavenge the Guatemala City Garbage Dump.

Meanwhile he was waiting to hear back from NYU graduate film program about his admission. “The moment I looked down into the garbage dump in Guatemala, into the depths of hell, I knew I needed to stay. That very night I got a message from NYU saying I got accepted. So I started trekking back to Texas to sell all my possessions and move to Singapore.”

His time in Guatemala got him thinking about that fateful dinner party and as he was crossing back over the Texas border to visit his kids in Nuevo Laredo, he called Carl Cooper to inquire about the status of Waking the World.

Greg encouraged him to “consider working with One Spark Films because Jake had a vision to support non-profits through creative media. But then we realized that our group of friends had such a diverse blend of gifts ready to be harnessed for service that if Waking the World could harmonize all of them, we could do so much more than media. Carl now had his vision.”

As he faced the prospect of taking on $67,000 in debt each year for the next four years for film school, Greg began to believe that he could pursue his passion for film without having debt up to his ears. In his travel through Central America, Greg had also “unlocked my passion for experiential learning. Before I could attend film school, I needed more adventures to discover what kind of stories I was called to tell.”

Instead of Singapore, Greg moved to Austin, got reconnected with Jake Hamilton and jumped on board with One Spark Films. What was really weighing on Greg’s mind was how he could focus his passion and natural talent for story-telling through filmmaking as well as help non-profits and Jake was offering just what Greg was seeking.

As Greg was making these big life transitions, Waking the World was and still is, entering its own as a non-profit. Carl, now the executive director, has just moved to Austin. Waking the World is now connected with Safe Passage, the non-profit Greg worked with in Guatemala, and with the Bridgeway Foundation, a non-profit run by Shannon Sedgewick Davis.

Long term, Waking the World’s vision is based on the philosophy expounded around that dinner table in College Station—using the unique gifts and talents of its members to impact the world—but now they have a practical way to fulfill that vision by offering business strategy and media solutions. Greg’s role lay on the media side and he is currently finishing up a documentary for Safe Passage, which he and Jake shot approximately a year ago.

Other members of the non-profit include accountants, strategists, photographers, financial analysts all seeking to put their expertise to work.

Because their core belief is that an individual’s potential to impact the world can be best tapped by applying their unique talents to non-profit work, their vision extends further than using their own talents to aid non-profits. The second tier of Waking the World’s mission is to help individuals recognize their unique gifts so that they can be placed with non-profits seeking long and short-term assistance.

Greg told me that most people understand the communications and business strategy side of Waking the World as it provides premium talent to non-profits at a price that pails in comparison to normal expenses. But the second mission, their movement, is more difficult for people to understand. It is simply that if you don’t have the passion, you don’t have the ability. Once you find your talent, your gift (often evident because of your passion in that area), you have the ability to greatly impact those around you and society. The fulfillment individuals find in their work results in positive changes for the world.

Waking the World is currently focused on finding funding, but also being able to carry multiple projects at once. “All the while,” Greg told me, “we’ve been focused on that second mission, getting people connected with their gifts, and becoming storytellers by sharing our philosophy at different forums.”

Greg is committed to the success of both One Spark Films and Waking the World and if you haven’t guessed already, his one-track mind is now consumed with changing the world through his films.

Director Greg

Greg and Jake filming Guest Room

Greg chases his crew member