Wilna Julmiste Taylor is an actor, writer, producer, award-winning filmmaker, and arts administrator. Her interest and work include investigating the intersections of art and culture, social justice efforts, and highlighting her Haitian heritage. She is an alumna of the Negro Ensemble Company in New York. She also studied acting at Rutgers University, The Wilma Theater and the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at Rutgers University, a Master of Science in Arts Administration from Drexel University and a Certificate in Diversity and Inclusion from Cornell University. She is a MOSAIC 2022 Changemaker Fellow.

Ms. Taylor is currently the Associate Director at the UCLA Art & Global Health Center and Lecturer in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance. Previously she was the Assistant Director at Vanderbilt University’s Curb Center for Art Enterprise and Public Policy and Visiting Artist at the school of Theatre at Vanderbilt. During her time in Nashville she also co-directed and facilitated the Racial Equity and Arts Leadership (REAL) program, with Nashville Metro Arts. She received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to support the REAL initiative.

Ms. Taylor’s artistic work has been presented nationally and internationally and produced at venues such as the Manhattan Repertory Theatre and the National Black Theatre Festival. She has been published in the Caribbean Writer where she is noted as an up and-coming voice in the community of Haitian American writers. She is a recipient of a Leeway Foundation Art and Change grant. The grant assisted her in producing a short film based on her original screenplay, Lugawu: A Shape Shifter which is a contemporary narrative based on traditional Haitian folklore. Ms. Taylor’s second short film, Lumiere Douce, Lumiere Brilliant (Soft light, brilliant light) explores the idea of duality, how the ordinary and sacred, or how the natural and supernatural legitimately co-exist. This film received an Audience Award at the Paris Film Festival- ARFF. It has been an official selection in several film festivals and was a featured work at the Louisiana Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival where it was a contender for a Best Experimental Film award.