In her 16 years of casting experience, Iliana Carter Cervantes has worked with some of the biggest brands and most respected production companies in the world. Having 20+ years of experience as an actress, she knows how to bridge the gap between production and talent in an easy, fruitful way that benefits everyone involved.

Born and raised between Los Angeles and the San Francisco East Bay Area to a culturally mixed family, she understands the dynamics and importance of authentic representation in casting, as well as the deep impact casting can have on the stories we tell.

Iliana was raised by her mother and grandmother, who fled the 12-year civil war in El Salvador and a life of deep poverty to work and love in the United States. They demonstrated the beauty, grace and joy that is the real face of so many immigrant stories, which are often portrayed as simply tragic, anguished, and one-dimensional. While she knows of the pain and deep injustices behind these stories that her mother and grandmother lived firsthand, she also learned that there is no singular experience for any group — not for any one gender, nationality, ethnicity, class, neighborhood, or any other form of identity.

Her father, a working-class white man originally from the suburbs of Los Angeles, taught her to look beyond stereotypes to see the heart of who people truly are, beyond the superficial images we may have been taught to believe in. He instilled in her the habit of being critically minded always, to value people for their spirit rather than simply their exterior, and to be guided by love in all that we do.

There is vastness of character within each family, and even within each individual. Iliana’s work as a Casting Director is purposeful in illuminating the diversity of stories within each and every one of us. We are all multifaceted, varied beings full of light and darkness. It’s time to tell the stories that unite us in our immense human experience.