Jennifer Yuh Nelson

Jennifer Yuh, born in 1972 in South Korea, immigrated to the United States with her parents and two sisters at age 4. She grew up in Lakewood, California, where she developed an early passion for drawing and storytelling, inspired by her mother and family experiences. “I have been drawing since age 3 and making movies in my head for almost as long,” Yuh has said, crediting her formative years for shaping her artistic path.

Yuh earned a bachelor of fine arts in illustration from California State University, Long Beach, where she was introduced to animation and realized she could “draw movies for a living.” She began her career as a cleanup artist at Jetlag Productions and became a storyboard artist on HBO’s “Todd McFarlane’s Spawn” series in 1997. In 1998, she joined DreamWorks Animation, contributing to “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron,” “Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas” and “Madagascar.”

A lifelong martial arts fan, Yuh served as head of story on “Kung Fu Panda,” directing the film’s hand-drawn dream sequence. Her work earned her the opportunity to direct “Kung Fu Panda 2,” which grossed $665.6 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film ever directed by a solo female director at the time. She became the first woman since 2007 to win the Annie Award for best directing in a feature production and remains the solo female director with the highest-grossing animated film. Yuh returned to direct “Kung Fu Panda 3” in 2016, the first American animated film co-produced with a Chinese firm.

She is now credited as a supervising director on Netflix’s animated anthology “Love, Death + Robots”, indicating her career has shifted beyond DreamWorks even though her earlier work remains a major part of her legacy.

Her ongoing creative roles include directing “The Darkest Minds” as a live‑action film, further demonstrating that she’s engaged in projects both within and outside traditional DreamWorks Animation production.

In 2016, Yuh joined the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She later announced her live-action directorial debut with the adaptation of Alexandra Bracken’s young adult novel “The Darkest Minds.”