Who We Are

What happens when a Pakistani, two Canadians, and a girl from Dearborn meet in Hollywood?

They share stories, inspire each other, and form the Muslim Women’s Art Society.

Gillian Müller

Gillian Müller was born and raised in Toronto and attended Ryerson’s Film Studies Program, Vancouver Film School‘s Writing for Film and Television, and Second City‘s Sketch Writing and Improv program. She spent the better part of a decade as an Assistant Director with the DGC. Gillian draws on her multi-ethnic West Indian family and her intimate knowledge of production to create character-driven content for film, television and digital platforms. 

Her short film, “If a Body” was acquired by Movieola and screened at the New York International Film Festival. In 2013, Gillian developed a pilot for Adam Beach‘s company Pipestone Pictures, and was selected by Random Bench co-founder, Liz Levine to show-run her webseries “Redemption”. Her feature script, “Hitchhiking in Saldanha”, was shortlisted in the Praxis Screenplay Competition in 2013 and the ScreenCraft Fellowship Competition in 2014. 

A 2014 resident of the CFC’s Primetime program under the show-runner Brad Wright (Stargate) Gillian was a part of the room that developed Travelers (Netflix). Gillian was the assistant to showrunners Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern on the final season of CBC’s “X Company” and co-directed the webseries “Night Owl” and the BravoFact“Checking Out” which was invited to SXSW’s inaugural Independent Episodics category in 2018, she co-produced Super Zee: The Webseries with an all P.O.C. cast and crew. Gillian was selected for MPAC’s Drama TV Writer’s Lab in Santa Monica, California, sponsored by the Emmy nominated Wise Entertainment. She is also a recipient of the Writer’s Guild of Canada Diverse Script of the Month for December 2018. Her original series “The Player’s Son” is currently with Sienna Films.

Najla Zaidi

Najla Zaidi is an actor, director and screenwriter, who has earned an MFA in screenwriting from UCLA and is an alumna of AFI’s prestigious Directing Workshop for Women. Najla has written and directed PSAs, short films, music videos and a feature length documentary with Peter DiStefano (Porno for Pyros and Jane’s Addiction) which have domestic and international distribution. In addition, she has acted since she was a child in Pakistan TV shows, as an adult in international dramas and US features along with writing and co-producing plays, sitcoms and variety shows for both domestic and South Asian networks. She has served as Jury Chair twice at the Temecula International Film and Music Festival. Najla also volunteers with AFI and the Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation as a directing teacher for their Young Women in Film Program as well as with The Art of Elysium. Najla Zaidi was born in Pakistan and raised in Kansas. She was put into preschool, so she could learn English but that’s not how she learned. She learned from watching television. Najla was so fascinated by it, that she grew up wishing to become a part of the process. She has grown up smack in the middle of two cultures and knows firsthand the comedy and tragedy of living with your feet in two boats and enjoys sharing her skewed perspective in any artform that she can.

Iman Saleh

Iman Saleh is a writer, a model, and journalist. She’s a doer by day and daydreamer by night. She’s graduating with a journalism degree at Wayne State University, but her true passion lies in fiction. She’s modeled, done too many (fun!) internships and loves to participate in labs, but you’ll most likely find her caring for her giant German shepherd, Wafi. Sometimes when Iman wants to spoil herself, she’ll splurge on a bubble tea with extra bubbles.

M.K. Ansari

Maryam (MK) Ansari is a tech lawyer, writer, and mom. She’s written over one thousand online articles and her credits include Huffington Post, Thomson Reuters, Yahoo News, and CNN.

She is the former editor of Illume Magazine, an online publication that focused on redefining the Muslim American narrative. She’s notorious for her controversial statements– whether online or onstage. She’s studied improv in San Francisco and is currently studying theater and classical acting with Berkeley Repertory Theater. She is a 2019 student at UCLA’s School of Film, Theater and Television’s program in Writing for Television. She also holds a law degree from University of Ottawa, and a Masters in Tax Law from Golden Gate University Law School. As a lawyer, she set up numerous nonprofit entities and worked closely with many charities and organizations. She has also worked as a lawyer at Silicon Valley tech companies for over five years.

She was selected twice by MPAC to represent Muslim screenwriters at Hollywood studios and has attended screenwriting labs at ABC and at Emmy-winning Wise Entertainment. She currently works closely with a LA studio that creates and produces diversity-focused programming.

Although she’s lived in Los Angeles and San Francisco, she’s a Canadian at heart. She was born and raised in Montreal and attended University of Ottawa.