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Class of 2026

Rachel Chin is a Malaysian-born writer and actor. She lived in Singapore for ten years before relocating to the United States. Her first full-length play, Expats Anonymous, tackled systemic classism and racism in Singapore, and was produced by the Yale Cabaret. Rachel’s plays have been commissioned by The Theatre of Others, MoreLife Theatre, The Wright Stuff Festival by The Toy Factory, and the Singapore International Festival of the Arts (SIFA X). She has also written for the MeWATCH Interactive TV Series, Adulting, and is a founding member of the sketch comedy group, Otters United FCRachel’s work often personalises the political, and she prides herself on finding levity in divisive themes. She was a resident of Centre 42’s Playwright’s Professional Development Residency and graduated from LASALLE College of the Arts with first-class honours in Acting. You can learn more about her work on her website, www.rachel-chin.com.

 

Abdeljaleel Ismail is a Sudanese American writer and filmmaker who graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Applied Mathematics and English. He hails from Marietta, Ohio — a small town on the Ohio River where his identity was such an outlier, it led to a deep exploration of pop culture, film, and narratives throughout his adolescence. This led Abdeljaleel to make a hobby out of writing himself. After working at HBO Max on the technical side of things, Ismail decided to pursue his creative passions and pivoted to podcast development and production at Spotify. Prior to pursuing his MFA in Writing for Screen and Stage at Northwestern University, Abdeljaleel spent 18 months on the Film Production Finance team at Netflix. 

His own work often reflects on identity, mental health, and exaggerated experiences he observes from family and friends. Stories of familial drama, coming of age, and characters that avoid responsibility at all cost excite him.

 

Amy B Tiong is a Chinese-American director and screenwriter. Inspired by her immigrant parents, she devoted herself to her love of learning, becoming a Gates Millennium Scholar and NYU Tisch Dean’s Scholar. She believes in showing solidarity on-screen and using film as a medium of generational healing; she aims to inspire empathy through genre-bending storytelling. Her feature script, When You’re Ready To Go, a horror immigration story, was in the top 3% of scripts on Coverfly, making it to the finalist rounds of WeScreenplay, Stowe Story Labs, and Screen Craft Competitions. She has directed short films with The Dolby Institute, Ghetto Film School, Bustle Media, PictureStart, Wavelength Productions, and The NAACP. Outside of her film career, she enjoys boxing, reading, dancing, baking, and serving her community. Additionally, she holds a Master’s degree in Human Nutrition. Her website can be found at amybtiong.com

 

Morgan Webber-Ottey is a writer and recovering lawyer. After discovering that there’s a lot less “trial strategy over takeout” in the real world than shown on TV, she made the difficult decision to hang up her litigator hat and swap one form of self-flagellation for another: writing darkly satirical one-hour dramas. Her character-driven writing centers deeply flawed women of color who are misfits and underdogs.

Morgan is a selected fellow for the 2024 NHMC’s Series Scriptwriters Program, an NBC and Disney/ABC sponsored program. She is a Stowe Story Labs/SAGindie Fellowship winner and was a second rounder in the Warner Bros. TV Writers’ Workshop. She previously worked as the Script Coordinator on the final, 20-episode season of Manifest on Netflix, and she is an alum of the Writers Guild Foundation’s Writers’ Access Support Staff Training Program.