Maori Karmael Holmes ('04) is a curator, filmmaker, writer and founder, CEO and Artistic Director of BlackStar Film Festival, which celebrates and provides platforms for visionary Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists.

She has organized programs in film at organizations including Anthology Film Archives, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), The Underground Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. As a director, her works have screened internationally, including her feature documentary Scene Not Heard: Women in Philadelphia Hip-Hop (2006). Holmes was a 2019-2020 Soros Equality Fellow and serves as Mediamaker-in-Residence at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, Curator-at-Large at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, and a Creative Executive with Blackbird.