Grace Gao is a first-generation Chinese American who graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2017 and began her career as Director’s Assistant to Xue Xiaolu on the Chinese-Australian co-production The Whistleblower (2019). From 2019 to 2021, she worked in Pearl Studio’s development department, contributing to the creative localization of the Oscar-nominated animated feature Over the Moon (2020). Her feature script Narcissus was a ScreenCraft Film Fund finalist, with its proof-of-concept short screening at LA Shorts Fest 2021. She earned her MFA in Screenwriting from USC in 2023, where her body of work received recognition from the Austin Film Festival, the Humanitas New Voices Fellowship, and the Berggruen Institute’s Vaster Than Empires III Writers Fellowship.

After serving as Head Writer at GoodShort and Head of Development at COL Sereal+, with microdrama series reaching 3M+ views, Grace founded Celestine Pictures, Inc., an IP-centric microdrama studio built on an AI-hybrid production pipeline and a global business model.