Born in Centralia, Washington, Sandra spent the first 18 years of her life in "Twin Peaks" country, the Great Northwest. The majority of her childhood was spent in Clackamas, Oregon, a then rural county outside of Portland. She had an eclectic childhood: she trained as a figure skater, performed professionally as a ventriloquist, worked as a child laborer in the strawberry fields for Smuckers Cannery, spent weekends on Mt. St. Helens (before the eruption, of course) and worked in her family's tropical fish store. She graduated valedictorian from Clackamas High School and she and a fellow classmate were the first people in its history to be accepted to Yale University.
At Yale, she discovered film and doubled majored in American Studies and Film Studies -- a major that did not exist until her junior year. At Yale, in lieu of writing the required senior essay for graduation, Sandra petitioned to make a documentary film. She graduated with honors and distinction in the majors. At graduation, the film won the Louis Sudler Prize in the Performing and Creative Arts, marking the first time Yale had recognized a film project.
Sandra immediately enrolled in the MFA program at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Graduate Film and Television where she concentrated in writing and directing. It was during this time, while working the 11pm-7am shift as a paralegal at a 24/7 law firm, that she met fellow artist, friend and long-time professional collaborator, Peggy Flood. They co-wrote Sandra's thesis film "True or False" which one five awards at the First Run Festival including Excellence in Filmmaking and Best Actor.
Sandra worked for various icons in the filmmaking industry including Frances Coppola, Bonnie Timmerman, Paul Schrader, and Eleanor Bergstein. In 1996 she made "Belly Talkers" for Harvey Weinstein at Miramax. She completed a stint as an associate director at the ABC soap opera "One Life to Live." She has been teaching film production at Yale University's School of Art since 1997 and has taught workshops at Columbia University, Barnard, SUNY Purchase and The Chinese International School in Hong Kong. She has developed and run a unique six-week production program at Yale Summer Sessions.
Recently she has worked as a camera operator on several reality television shows, directed numerous documentary shorts, and was the director of photography on a feature documentary that took her to China.
She is in preproduction to direct a script she wrote based on a WWII memoir.
Courtesy of Internet Movie Database.