Angela is a Brooklyn-based writer and filmmaker who spent her childhood performing Chinese stand up
comedy in Houston, Texas. Since then, she's traded the stage for writing and directing movies. She
spends most of her life obsessing about Asian-American identity, weird science, and how to perfect the
noodle soup.
Angela’s feature screenplay, Lucky Grandma, co-written with director Sasie Sealy, won the AT&T and
Tribeca Film Festival’s 2018 Untold Stories $1 million filmmaking grant. The movie, starring the
inimitable Tsai Chin (Joy Luck Club, Casino Royale) debuted at Tribeca Film Festival in April 2019 and
will be making its European debut at the London Film Festival.
Her screenplay Trouble to the Herd is also the winner of the 2019 AsianCinevision SAG-AFTRA
Screenplay Award and is currently a finalist at this year’s Nashville Film Festival.
Her short film Ten & Two - about a Chinese-American housewife who learns how to drive in order to
leave her husband - was awarded NYU’s Wasserman Prize for Filmmaking. She’s been awarded the
Sloan Foundation feature screenplay award for Sugar Water, a gothic drama about the strange discovery
of insulin. Her work has been shown at SXSW, Palm Springs International Short Film
Festival, Newfest, Outfest, and Los Angeles International Film Festival.
Professionally, Angela has directed the stage for TED Talks, featuring brilliant speakers with “Ideas
Worth Spreading.” She is currently the Creative Director of Format Development at TED,
experimenting with and launching new forms of storytelling. She and her team are the creative force
behind the video series Small Thing Big Idea and DIY Neuroscience - garnering millions of views
online. She is also part of the editorial team behind WorkLife with Adam Grant - a popular podcast about
how to make work not suck. She continues to develop short form video content as well as longform
podcasts with a focus on exploring ideas that have the potential to make an impact on the world.
View interview transcript PDF — Full interview materials on Rice Digital Collections