Alston Ramsay was a speechwriter in Washington, D.C., prior to moving to Los Angeles to pursue filmmaking. He has written for and been a senior advisor to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, General David Petraeus, and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson. In those roles, he traveled to more than three dozen countries on behalf of the U.S. government and spent a year in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he ran the commanding general’s writing team at the peak of the war. Following that, he earned an M.B.A. from UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and worked in management consulting and as a sales and marketing executive at a start-up.

His feature-length film Midnighters, which he wrote and produced, premiered at the 2017 Los Angeles Film Festival and was recently released by IFC. It currently holds a 92% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

When he’s not busy looking for new script ideas to write and produce, Alston is taking landscape photos in the dead of night, perfecting his award-winning chili recipe, and obsessively hitting refresh on UNC basketball forums.