Philipps is an Emmy-nominated director and documentary filmmaker whose work has been featured on National Geographic, Vice, History Channel, Discovery, Hulu, Paramount + and Amazon. She is currently the Showrunner & Executive Producer for a Showtime doc series covering the black market trade of rhino horn. She was the Co-Executive Producer of the Emmy-nominated, 11 Minutes, a documentary series for Paramount+ that delved deeply into the lives of survivors from America’s deadliest mass shooting, showcasing the heroic actions of everyday people in times of peril.
In 2017, for the Nat Geo series “Chain of Command,” she led a frontline team in Mosul, Iraq, documenting the Iraqi and American effort to defeat ISIS. In Afghanistan, she filmed with the U.S. Army four-star General Nicholson, as he met with then- President Ashraf Ghani, to discuss the Taliban and coalition fighting in America’s longest war. She spent weeks on a U.S. aircraft carrier, covering the air campaign over Syria and is no stranger to directing documentaries in fast-paced and chaotic environments.
Aside from trekking through war zones, Philipps co-executive produced History Channel’s Unidentified, a documentary series that made headlines detailing the Pentagon’s shadowy UFO program. Philipps and her team uncovered testimony from active Navy pilots, CIA agents and Pentagon insiders about previously classified UFO sightings. This series was the first to report these incidents on camera, and ultimately played a part in the first-ever publicly released report by the Director of National Intelligence — an unprecedented move for transparency in one of the most controversial topics of our time. In 2022, she won best inspirational documentary at DOCLA and in 2023, Best Short Documentary at the International Women’s Film Festival, and a handful of other awards, for her film, Lifeline, a documentary short that she directed, produced and shot, showcasing homelessness in LA. She has worked hand-in-hand with acclaimed directors such as Jeff Zimbalist and Amy Berg and has managed teams upwards of 20 from pre-production through to delivery.
Prior to graduating from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Philipps worked in print journalism, where she published stories for the SF Chronicle and several California newspapers as a political beat reporter based out of Washington D.C. Philipps has a master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a B.A. from the University of California – Davis.
