Sonia Jean-Baptiste

Sonia Jean-Baptiste is the Co-Founder and Director of the Chelsea Film Festival. She is a French-Caribbean native from Martinique, raised in Paris from the age of six years old. She studied business, learned how to play the piano and established a reputation as an accomplished pianist, performing at prestigious venues in Paris, such as the Salle Pleyel. Jean-Baptiste worked as the Sales & Marketing Director for a photography firm in Paris for twelve years, where she was selling photography consumables (paper, film, chemistry) to Japan, Africa and all over Europe. She went on to create her own advertising and publicity agency dedicated to large corporations. In 2010, she embarked on a new journey in front of the camera and took acting classes at the Cours Florent in Paris, which she enjoyed very much. Daily soap opera TV shows on Canal+ hired Jean-Baptiste as an actress for many years until she was injured in a car accident with her only child, Ingrid Jean-Baptiste in September 2012. Jean-Baptiste currently resides between Paris and New York. Together, they founded the Chelsea Film Festival in New York in October 2013 and share an important mission of making our world a better place. Today, she is a Talent & Film Publicist and the Head Programmer of the Chelsea Film Festival, that has been selected in the Top 10 Best Film Festivals in North America by an online vote published on USA Today in March 2019.