Anne del Castillo

Anne del Castillo has served as a senior executive at the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment since 2014, where she has led the agency in creating free mentorship and training opportunities to increase diversity in writers’ rooms. Ms. del Castillo has helped establish The Freelancers Hub and The Made in NY Women’s Film, TV and Theatre Fund, the first municipal program in the country designed to promote equality behind and in front of the camera in film and television, as well as onstage.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ms. del Castillo advocated for support of the creative economy and established programs to help the creative sector, including “Music for Soul/Music Heals,” which provided paid work for musicians union members entertaining patients and frontline workers at hospitals and vaccine sites, and “Open Culture,” which allowed arts organizations to stage ticketed events outdoors.

Prior to her service in City government, her career ranged from working with multimedia artist Richard Kostelanetz, to consulting on numerous film projects, to being the associate producer on the Sundance award-winning documentary, Imelda. As Vice President of Development and Business Affairs at American Documentary, Ms. del Castillo secured funding for the Diverse Voice Project, which provided co-production funds for diverse, emerging documentary makers on the PBS series, POV. She was Vice President of the Board of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, and has also worked on funding panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Center for Asian American Media, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Ms. del Castillo was born in New York City and raised in Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan, where she still lives across the street from her mother, and where she is raising her son. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Bachelor of Science in Mass Communications with honors from Boston University, and her JD at Brooklyn Law School.

Throughout her career, Ms. del Castillo has been a strong advocate for the creative community, and the creative community has flourished because of her support.