Alinca Hamilton. Actor. Writer. Filmmaker.

Alinca (pronounced ah-LINK-ah) Hamilton is a first-generation American and native New Yorker born to Jamaican parents. As the eldest child of a Sgt. Major in the Marine Corps and an Aries, so she knows a thing or two about discipline, perseverance, and making your bed every morning.

Full of curiosity, creativity, and naiveté, Alinca was eager to let her inner Angelina Jolie shine, but found her parents unwilling to support her if she pursued any artistic passion in college. She would love to say she stuck to her guns, but even at 17 years old, she felt a personal responsibility to her family to “do well” in life, and that meant a stable career in business.

Alinca graduated from Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business with a BBA in Entrepreneurship. Her creative and professional experiences at the Ford Foundation, WABC-TV Channel 7, and the Downtown Community Television Center combined her love of the arts with her passion for implementing social change, using theatre and filmmaking as platforms to start a conversation. She went on to earn her MFA in Acting from Columbia University.

She has come to recognize and advocate the value of other Black teenage girls seeing women that look like them creating and performing. Angelina is cool, but we need to see more Alincas.