51 years ago today, on September 22nd, 1970, the filmmaker Hanelle M. Culpepper was born. An Alabama native, Culpepper grew up wanting to be an actor, until her parents reminded her that she was always directing her siblings in plays that she wrote herself. Then in her senior year of high school, she directed the play If Men Played Cards As Women Do by George S. Kaufman and her path as a director was set.

Culpepper is a graduate of Lake Forest College, where she majored in economics and French, after which she matriculated at the University of Southern California, where she earned a MA in Communications. She has directed on many of TV’s hottest shows, including Parenthood, Criminal Minds, The Flash, American Gothic and How To Get Away With Murder. She is currently the co-executive producer of the rebooted series Kung Fu, for which she also directed the pilot.

Culpepper made history when she became the first woman director and the first African American director to launch a new Star Trek series, directing the opening three episodes of Star Trek: Picard, “Remembrance” (for which she received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series.) “Maps and Legends” and “The End Is the Beginning.” She had previously directed Star Trek: Discovery’s first season episode, “Vaulting Ambition,” and two of its second season episodes, “The Red Angel” and “Forget Me Not.”

Please join us in wishing Hanelle Culpepper a very happy 51st birthday.