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Join the ISA and the Writers Guild Foundation as we dive in with these fantastically funny women about their careers, rising up in the industry, discovering their voices in comedy and becoming multi-hyphenates. Apply their experiences to help you find your own path to comedy greatness.
Caitlin Arcand has served as the Marketing Manager for the ISA for the past three years, as well as providing Script Coverage for their reading team. Outside of her work at the ISA, she is an active producer, writer and comedian. She has worked in production with companies such as Netflix, ESPN, The Ivy League Network and Luminant Media, in addition to producing award-winning films that showcased at Slamdance, Wicked Queer Film Festival and Los Angeles Indie Short Fest. As a performer, Caitlin has been seen on stages including: The North Carolina Comedy Festival, NYC Fringe, Solocom NYC and The Portland Comedy Festival. In 2021, she was named one of Buzzfeed's Women to Watch for her women and LGBTQ+-centered humor platform, inspired by two sold-out years of Boston's only all-female comedy show, which Caitlin created and hosted. She is a huge advocate for industry education and regularly teaches sketch comedy writing, improv, social media marketing and design to students of all ages.
Beth Curry won the Nicholl Fellowship in 2020 for her script LEMON, which was optioned by Mandalay Pictures. Her script, The Wonder Yard, starring Tony Shalhoub and Jacki Weaver, with Rosemary Rodriguez attached to direct, is funded by Concourse Media and is due to shoot in early 2025. She has another feature, produced by Mike Medavoy, called Almost Normal, with Dan Aykroyd attached to star and produce, due to shoot in the spring of 2025.
As a multi-hyphenate, Beth used to perform on the Broadway stage in shows like Legally Blonde, Good Vibrations, Young Frankenstein, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. She has appeared in many TV shows as an actor: Hacks, GLOW, Shining Vale, Superstore, Hart of Dixie, Pretty Freekin’ Scary, Hacks, Seal Team, Paradise City, and many others. She just directed and produced a short film of her Nicholl script, Lemon.
Rupinder Gill is a Canadian writer currently writing on the CBS comedy “Ghosts”. She was also a writer/ director on Mindy Kaling’s HBO Max series “The Sex Lives of College Girls” and has written on series such as Peacock’s “Rutherford Falls”, and multiple seasons of the Emmy-award-winning Eugene Levy/Catherine O’ Hara starrer “Schitt’s Creek”. She is also the author of the memoir On The Outside Looking Indian, and has written for The Onion, McSweeneys, and O Magazine.
Ida Yazdi is an Iranian American screenwriter and former architect raised between Isfahan, Iran and Birmingham, Alabama. She is currently a Staff Writer for a new NBC half-hour comedy.
She was selected for the 2022-23 NBC TV Writers Program and was accepted into the STARZ #TakeTheLead Writers’ Intensive, the Writers Guild Foundation’s Writers’ Access Training Program, and Women in Film Writers Mentorship Program. Her pilot was also featured on the 2021-22 Muslim List, created in partnership with the Black List.
She received an MFA in Screenwriting from Columbia University and has previously worked for shows like City on Fire on Apple TV+ and The Girls on the Bus on HBOMax.
Shayna Weber, ISA's Creative Executive, Shayna Weber is a screenwriter, producer, and director originally from Bend, Oregon. She started out assisting in casting for music videos in the early 2000’s where she would often jump out of the car and ambush cool-looking strangers on the street to be extras. After that, Shayna began a 15-year deep dive into human psychology and behavior by producing unscripted television. Her roster of shows include: So You Think You Can Dance, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Weakest Link, and the Miss Universe Pageants. Shayna also produced on the award-winning, horror/comedy, Lunch Ladies, and then directed its follow up, A Very Important Film. Shayna and her partner, Clarissa Jacobson, co-directed a hybrid-documentary titled Butts, which follows a day in the life of their 3’11” friend Kent who lives with brittle bone disease. They also sold a horror feature script, Bruha, that is currently in production.