Vanessa Uhlig started her career in non-profit fundraising, first at the Exploratorium in the Bay Area and then with international development projects in Brooklyn, Guatemala, Uganda, and Thailand. These diverse experiences informed her desire to use film to transmit stories across cultures, and she began study for her MFA at UT Austin in 2015. Her films, both narrative and documentary, explore social and economic inequality. Her most recent short film, Las Cruces, premiered in 2019 at the Austin Film Festival.