Director, actor, and author Yangzom Brauen, the daughter of Swiss anthropologist Martin Brauen and Tibetan artist Sonam Dolma Brauen, was born to be a socially conscious activist. She tells HFPA journalist Marlene von Arx that those themes are also important on the two TV shows, The Republic of Sarah and Rebel, that Brauen has been directing lately. Rebel is currently airing on ABC.

“Both shows are socially conscious shows. Rebel is about Erin Brockovich, loosely based on her life. It’s a drama and a comedy at the same time because the creator Krista Vernoff says: “there’s always so much drama but then there’s also comedy in drama so there’s a lightness in drama”. Rebel fights for the poor and the weaker people, and takes on corporations She’s like the female Robin Hood I would say.”

The Republic of Sarah debuts on The CW on June 14. ”It is about this young girl who lives in a town where a mining company comes in and wants to destroy all the houses because they found coltan. And so, she finds a loophole that that town was never part of the U.S. and creates her own nation. That’s how the show starts and she creates with her friends and family this nation and all the problems, which come up suddenly having your own republic.”

Previously she’s been directing TV shows like NCIS: Los Angeles, Hawaii Five-0, MacGyver, and Magnum P.I. She got her first stint after her short, a story about child soldiers Born in Battle, was screened in Los Angeles.

“I submitted it to a lot of festivals all over the world. And then I felt like I wanted to put it in a movie theater in LA to show it to some friends and families. And one night, or afternoon, I think it was a 5 PM screening, there was a couple I didn’t know.  And I introduced myself and asked how did they hear about it?  She said she knows the mom of the child who is my lead and he is her husband and he said he’s a TV director.  And I was like “oh”.  I wasn’t thinking, I just said to him “I heard that to start in TV you have to shadow a director” and I asked him “can I shadow you on a TV show?” That was actually the start.  It took another two years until I got my first episode, but I was on a mission from that point on.”

Listen to the podcast and hear how she got interested in the arts; who she idolized as a kid; why she moved from Switzerland to Berlin; how she got inspired to move to Los Angeles; what kind of challenges she faced in the City of Angels; how she became a director; what she learned from shadowing a TV director; how she describes the job of the TV director; how was her grandmother’s and mother’s journey from Tibet to India and from there to Switzerland and how their stories influenced her; what lessons she learned from her grandmother; how she became political and president of the Tibetan Youth Association; why she got arrested in Moscow; how she got her book deal for Across Many Mountains