Marita Grabiak

After working for a year on the New York theater scene, Marita Grabiak relocated to the West Coast, where she studied motion picture and television production at UCLA. She graduated in 1986 and ran the gamut of positions in front of and behind the camera, most prominently as script supervisor for a number of features. She brought this skill to bear on television, when she served in that capacity for one of NBC's hit "Must See TV" shows, the doctor drama "ER." That gig proved to be her launching pad as a director; she shot two episodes before moving on to other popular shows like "Dawson's Creek," on the former WB, and "The Division," on Lifetime. Her work on an episode of the cult favorite "Firefly" must have endeared her to Joss Whedon, the show's creator; she directed several episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and its spinoff, "Angel," two other components of the Whedon catalogue. In addition to those, she's put in time on other offbeat shows with cult followings, like "Wonderfalls" and the SyFy Channel reboot of "Battlestar Galactica," not to mention "Lost" and "Alias." A world traveler, Grabiak has put her undergrad degree in (and passion for) anthropology to use at Craterlion Productions, an outfit that produces documentary programming about native cultures and conservancy like "Way of Life," for the Discovery Networks.