Award-winning author, historian, filmmaker, educator, musician and more, Mindy Johnson’s creative accomplishments reflect the diversity of her talents and experience. A leading expert on women’s roles in animation and film history, Mindy writes and speaks on early cinema, animation, women’s history, and creativity.

A recipient of the prestigious ASIFA-Hollywood June Foray "Annie" Award, given to individuals who've made a significant and benevolent or charitable impact on the art and industry of animation. Mindy's honors also include the Academy Film Scholar Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences/Oscars.org, and the ASIFA–Hollywood AEF Grant, for continued research and writing on the contributions of the earliest women within our collective animated past. With several forthcoming volumes underway, Mindy's groundbreaking discoveries continue to cast light on the invisible narrative of women’s presence within the first century of the motion picture industry. Her latest landmark breakthrough is the discovery of Bessie Mae Kelley and her surviving films believed to be the earliest surviving hand-drawn animation, animated and directed by a woman, forever busting the myth of women no longer present at the dawn of the animation industry.