Search Party

Tesia Walker, Director/Writer

Tesia Joy Walker is a writer/director hailing from New York City. She is a recent graduate of the Columbia University Film MFA Program, where she won Best Teleplay Pilot for her drama script, The Border, and received the Jesse Thompkins III Writing Fellowship at the 2015 Columbia University Film Festival. Her pilot is also featured on the 2016 Columbia Blue List, which is a script competition for recent alumni of the program. Top agents, managers, writers, producers, directors, screenwriters, showrunners, and studio executives select the winners on the list. Her most recent short film, Search Party, was the recipient of an HBO Production Grant. The film also went on to win the SimonSays Entertainment Award for Innovative Filmmaking at the 2016 Columbia University Film Festival. Search Party is also a semifinalist in NBC Universal’s 2016 Shorts Fest.

Prior to Columbia, Tesia participated in the NBC Page Program, where she was assigned to several departments, including Late Night television and Development. Following the Page Program, she worked in television production for the shows: Eli Stone and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. 

Tesia also enjoys teaching the art of filmmaking to others. While at Columbia, she helped to design a summer program for high school students interested in pursuing careers in the film industry.