Speaker: Domee Shi, Academy Award–Winning Director, Writer, and Storyteller; Creative Vice President, Pixar
Discussant: Ju Yon Kim, Patsy Takemoto Mink Professor of English, Harvard University

Join the Academy Award–winning director, animator, and filmmaker Domee Shi for an engaging conversation about creative expression and empathetic storytelling. A self-described “film nerd,” Shi will be joined by Ju Yon Kim, the Patsy Takemoto Mink Professor of English at Harvard, to discuss Shi’s life and career, taking surprising creative risks, and using animation to explore worlds different from our own while finding universality through the stories told.

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To view this event online, each individual will need to register via Zoom.

Domee Shi is an Academy Award–winning director, writer, and storyteller with a 14-year career in the animation industry. She began as a story artist on Pixar’s Academy Award–winning Inside Out (2015) before contributing to The Good Dinosaur (2015), Incredibles 2 (2018), and Toy Story 4 (2019). In 2015, she pitched the idea for Bao (2018), a deeply personal short film that went on to win the Academy Award for best animated short.

Shi made history with her feature directorial debut, Turning Red (2022). Praised for its bold storytelling and exploration of adolescence and family, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for best animated feature. Her latest film, Elio (2025), a sci-fi adventure, was released in theatres this past June. Alongside directing, Shi is also a creative vice president at Pixar, playing a key role in shaping the studio’s creative vision and consulting on projects in both development and production. 

Shi was born in Chongqing, China, and resided in Toronto, Canada, for most of her life. She currently lives in Oakland, California, and notes that her love of animation is only rivaled by her love of cats.