Kylie Eaton may not have always sought community as she traveled through the film world, but she found it at UCLA Extension, and she has since found a home at the Alliance of Women Directors (AWD).

With a career spanning television, music videos and short film, Eaton has experienced just about everything the industry has to offer. She laughed that since she completed the Directing Certificate Program, she can’t help but run into alumni.

“The UCLA Extension network is really big and you come into contact with people all of the time from it,” she said.

That includes at the Alliance of Women Directors. Eaton first sought feedback on a project. Then she found herself volunteering for the organization and writing its newsletter.

“The Alliance of Women Directors was such a welcoming environment where people honestly supported and encouraged each other,” she said. “Their feedback challenged me but in a way that it really made my films better.”

By 2025, she was named its first full-time executive director.

“A lot of places in the film world felt transactional, but I joined AWD and it was different,” she added. Going forward, she can’t wait to keep growing in her new position.

But before all this, Eaton was a young girl growing up in Illinois, who didn’t have any connections to the film industry but always knew she wanted to be a storyteller. She loved reading fantasy and science fiction and was interested in becoming a writer.

It was actually the behind-the-scenes DVD extras that roped her into the world of film, specifically when she watched Tim Burton work on his adaptation of “Planet of the Apes.”

“At some point in high school, when behind the scenes DVD bonus features were a thing, seeing that footage and understanding who had what role in a film was very influential,” she said. “Seeing how a set was run, I was like, ‘Oh that was what I want to do, I want to be in charge.’ And I was kind of the kid who always got called bossy.”

Eaton won a scholarship to attend a UCLA film camp for high schoolers. And during that time she immersed herself in the process of filmmaking.

“That was my first experience making a little short film outside of school projects or running around with a VHS camcorder in the 1990s,” she said. “We got to do everything: write, shoot, edit and screen. I absolutely loved it and decided that is what I wanted to do with my life.”

Eaton attended film school at Chapman University, moved to Los Angeles and earned a job as an assistant at 20^th Century Fox Studios on the television side of post-production.

“It was a great experience to begin to understand how the entertainment industry works,” she said.

After Fox, Eaton immersed herself in the world of music videos, and became fairly successful directing visuals for acts including Owl City.

“But with music videos you burn out quickly,” she said.

She wanted to get back to where she was as a child – telling stories with a clear and full narrative arc. She returned to the UCLA campus almost exactly 15 years after she first arrived for camp, ready to dive into UCLA Extension’s Entertainment Studies courses.

“I hadn’t done that kind of storytelling since college, so I needed something like UCLA Extension’s Directing Certificate Program,” she said. “It was great to have that structure and specific deadlines that would sort of force me to go out there and shoot something. I needed something to get me going on narrative again.”

The Directing Certificate Program was helpful because it was expansive. Classes included topics beyond directing. Eaton took an acting class for directors. Another course assigned a project that asked students to string together a bunch of still images with a soundtrack. That felt inspiring and got her “unstuck” creatively at the time.

“The program gave me confidence again as a narrative director that I could write a compelling narrative short, I could shoot it, bring in all the elements you don’t have in a music video like dialogue and sound, and tell a really concise story,” she said.

Instructors even invited students to the sets they were working on. There was community.

“I met a lot of great people in the program that I am still in touch with today,” she said. “It was a good network of filmmakers and creatives.”

After a year and a half, Eaton felt like she had accomplished exactly what she set out to do. She completed several scripts and short films by the end of the program.

Today, she works to help fellow women and gender expansive filmmakers through her position with the Alliance of Women Directors. In her role as executive director, she has led the organization’s strategic growth, expanded professional development and mentorship programming, strengthened partnerships with studios, networks, and industry organizations, and significantly increased membership and fundraising to support AWD’s mission. There are more than 550 directing members and more than 150 ally members.

“I spent a lot of time doing this work as a volunteer, but I was very excited to be able to dedicate my full time to this organization,” she said. “We will continue to build more partnerships, gain more members and increase awareness.