About

Isabella Madrigal is an enrolled member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians and is of Turtle Mountain Ojibwe descent. A playwright, actress, and screenwriter, her artistry is invested in the ways Indigenous cultural knowledge systems, artistic expressions, and oral tradition practices are crucial to the health and wellbeing of Indigenous people. Isabella is a recent graduate of Harvard College where she majored in English and won the Harvard Hoopes Thesis Prize for her screenplay, Menil and Her Heart. Isabella and her sister Sophia are the Co-Directors of the Luke Madrigal Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit, which empowers, preserves, strengthens, and amplifies Indigenous ways of knowing through performance art. Isabella’s play Menil and Her Heart was a winner of the Yale Young Native Storytellers Contest in 2020 and has been featured at sixteen venues across the nation, including the United Nations and the California State Capitol in 2022 for legislators voting on issues surrounding Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives. Isabella currently sits on the Youth Advisory Board for the Center for Native American Youth (where she was previously named a Champion for Change). As an actress, Isabella is best known for her roles in Menil and Heart, Rutherford Falls, and Marvel’s Echo. Isabella is also featured in the fifth issue of the bestselling series Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls: Inspiring Young Changemakers and her essay on sisterhood was published in the 2023 Anthology Dear Rebel. Isabella was a 2023-2024 filmmaking recipient of the Center for Cultural Power’s Culture Bearer Award and is a 2025 recipient of the California Arts Council Impact Grant.