Jessica Yu (Director/Writer/Editor/Co-producer) won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short for Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien, a portrait of the award-winning writer who worked for decades from the confines of an iron lung. The film earned numerous other awards, including an Emmy and a Cable Ace Award for Best Documentary Director. Yu also directed the award-winning HBO film The Living Museum, which profiles an art community in a New York mental institution. Her other credits include the narrative short Better Late, the documentary Men of Reenaction, about Civil War re-enactors, the musical comedy short The Conductor, featuring Mark Salzman, the documentary Home Base, and the award-winning and perennial festival favorite black & white short, Sour Death Balls. Yu has also directed Emmy-winning commercials.
In 2000, Yu was artist-in-residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The first director selected for the John Wells Diversity Program, she has directed episodes of the NBC dramas The West Wing, American Dreams, ER, and Mr. Sterling, and The Guardian for CBS. She has written articles and fiction for the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Buzz, Worth, and Pacific News Service. Yu has served on the Board of Directors of the International Documentary Association. She is a graduate of Yale University.