Bea Portela is a documentary filmmaker drawn to stories of land, labor, and environmental justice.

Her work has taken her from tomato fields in Arkansas to catfish ponds in Mississippi, where she conducted outreach and provided legal services to migrant farmworkers. She was a 2024 multimedia fellow with the Daily Yonder, a national newsroom covering rural communities. In her current role, she uses investigative research and data analysis to support environmental lawyers challenging harmful oil and gas expansion.

Raised between Texas and Italy, and now based in San Francisco, she holds a BA from Yale University in Environmental Studies and Education.