Yeon Jin Lee is a Korean-American writer and filmmaker specializing in the thriller genre. Her stories spotlight women in STEM, and explore characters who straddle seemingly disparate communities in the United States.
Yeon Jin’s experiences as one of the few female engineers at UC Berkeley, Pixar, and NASA, and as a first-generation immigrant, have given her much insight into the challenges one faces as a minority.
She believes that filmmakers have the unique opportunity to provoke thought and engender empathy through storytelling. Her goal is to continue writing stories that feature characters from underrepresented, minority communities whose experiences she shares.
Yeon Jin earned her B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley, and M.S. in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. After an internship at Pixar and five years as a computer scientist at NASA, she left Silicon Valley to pursue filmmaking full-time.
She is an alumna of the USC School of Cinematic Arts MFA Program, The Black List Feature Lab, Norton Island Residency, Almanack Screenwriters October Colony, and WGA Writers Access Support Staff Training Program. Yeon Jin was a showrunner’s assistant on CBS show, Watson. She’s currently shadowing producer Nina Yang Bongiovi on a feature film as a Gold House Producers Accelerator fellow.