Nadia was born in New York City, where she earned her BA at Sarah Lawrence College and has been living in Los Angeles for almost 18 years. Having lived in many corners of the world, including Spain for a decade, Haiti and Russia, Nadia feels at home anywhere her family, colleagues and friends are. She traveled a lot during childhood due to her family’s bohemian lifestyle, writer- father is from Montenegro and her creative performer-artist- mother, The Philippines.

 

Her work has taken her to many foreign countries for Film and TV productions including Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, Dominican Republic and Cuba. Thankfully, she’s picked-up several languages such as French, Catalán, Valenciano, Creole, Russian, and is fluent in Spanish.

While in High School Nadia was chosen to be part of the Future Filmmaker’s Workshop at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. She became President of the Video Club at Washington Irving H.S. where she made her first animated film, and won a Drama Cup at a local city competition for playing opposite roles: male and female in the same play by Lope de Vega in Spanish. When living in Spain she did lots of acting in Theater and took her first courses in Photography while completing her Baccalaureate at the Instituto de Bachillerato de Miguel Hernández. Several of her B&W photographs that were exhibited in NYC were bought and published by Paramount and she’d use the money to invest in more 35mm camera equipment. Till this day her mother still tells her off for turning down Sesame Street when she was 4yrs old at Bethlehem Day Nursery School in New York…lol

 

Nadia’s career began with Good Machine Inc. working on low budget independent feature films while still in College, with mentors, Ted Hope and James Schamus. She was lucky to work with indie Directors Nicole Holefcener, Hannah Weyer, Tod Haynes, Hal Hartley, Eddie Burns, and Ang Lee. A few years later she was working on big budget Hollywood features such as “Hurricane” director Norman Jewison and “Music of the Heart” with Wes Craven. Chosen as a Finalist for Documentary by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences after graduating college, Nadia has always worked her way up, from Locations Intern, Key PA, Production Coordinator, Assistant Producer, Script Supervisor on features, to 1st Assistant Director, Line Producer, Producer and eventually Executive Producer on TV commercial sets. She worked every department that would hire her on feature films, she also did TV Shows on CNN, MTV, VH1, and BBC, and worked on a couple of music videos for Celine Dion, Trick Daddy, Juan Luis Guerra, Jennifer Lopez…

 

Then one day out of the blue, she was asked to be the Agency Producer at one of the top US Hispanic Advertising Agency’s with Fortune 500 clients, including General Motors, Pontiac, Anheuser Busch, Bacardi, Castrol Oil, an offer she could not refuse and that gave her the opportunity to work with the best commercial production companies in the nation both for the US Hispanic Market and the General Market.

 

In 2001 she moved to Los Angeles after accepting one of two job offers - to work at a top production house or a small Ad Agency that was looking to grow, she choose the latter, and contributed greatly towards the success of the Agency for the next 4 years winning 19 new business accounts out of 20 pitches, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Dole, ICI Paints, CSK Auto Parts, Mervyn’. She also produced for pre-existing accounts Toyota and McDonald’s.

 

Despite being offered Producing jobs at other reputable Hispanic Agencies such as Global Hue, Lopez Negrete and La Agencia D’Orci amongst others, in 2005 she decided to pursue her more creative side by moving on to directing - something she told her father she wanted to do when she was 10 years old after watching Citizen Kane and Metropolis. She directed, produced and wrote several short films and documentaries as well as PSAs pro bono for non-profits Esperanza Community Housing Corp and CHIRLA, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights who awarded her a certificate of recognition.

 

After having her son in 2008 (to commemorate the first US African American President,) she started representing several well-known production companies, editorial and animation houses as well as music composers, and feature film directors like Jaume Collat-Serra and Rodrigo Garcia, this allowed her to be closer to home.

 

Nadia recently produced a short comedy film “Ending Up” starring Jenica Bergere and Matt Letscher that has been doing very well in the festivals circuit.

 

She is in development for a couple of feature film projects and documentaries, and continues to produce TV commercials on a freelance basis.

 

She enjoys spending more time with her son and her dog, Estrella, and less battling security at airports all over the world.  She’s always up for a good tennis match, a quick spin in a Cessna, Hot Yoga, and is hoping Brazil will win thie next Soccer World Cup.

 

Nadia just ran a 5k for BrittaCares: helping children survive cancer - after her last Honolulu Marathon that raised 8 million for APLA and the fight against AIDS.