Krista Ramirez-Villatoro, Lab Program Fellow
RespectAbility Entertainment Professionals Lab, Summer 2021
Krista Ramirez-Villatoro
Krista Ramirez-Villatoro (she/her) is an Entertainment Media Fellow with RespectAbility’s National Leadership Program for Summer 2021. She is a recent graduate from the Cinema and Media Arts program at Biola University in Southern California. During her time at Biola University, Villatoro founded the Girls In Film Club (GIF) to create a space for female filmmakers to collaborate. Her undergraduate work consisted of documentary films of subjects ranging from disability advocacy to migrant refugees at the US/Mexico border. She is continuing her education this fall at the University of California Los Angeles, where she will be completing the Design and Media Arts program. Villatoro is looking forward to expanding into the world of virtual reality for her master’s program. She hopes to use this new medium to speak on the experiences of disabled individuals like herself.
Along with her work in film and art, Villatoro is a committed advocate for the inclusion of disability in sports. While completing her master’s program, Villatoro will be UCLA’s first adaptive athlete to compete at a collegiate level in wheelchair tennis. Villatoro understands the value of community programs that include disabled youth. Because of this, she is currently working with the Rocky Mountain Tennis Center in Boulder, CO to expand the curriculums to include wheelchair players.
In her free time, Villatoro can be found sit-skiing in Winter Park, Colorado
