Yaphet Smith

Having been a CPA, an attorney, and now a screenwriter, Yaphet feels at home amongst bean-counters, barristers, and beautiful people.

Given his combined business and arts background, Yaphet often speaks to diverse audiences about storytelling, purpose, and creativity. He has written for Walt Disney Pictures and Spike Lee’s 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, and he’s won several writing honors, including being selected for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab for his screenplay, “The Supermarvelous." While in law school, Yaphet initiated and self-financed a study of innovation in the film industry, then wrote and issued the 80-page “NYU Black Film Report." Yaphet's latest script, a modern version of the novel Les Misérables, is set in New Orleans.

He is a magna cum laude graduate of Georgetown University and NYU School of Law, where we was on Law Review. Yaphet and his family now reside in a suburb of Austin, Texas, that is affectionately known as “The Rock."