Ronnie del Carmen

Animator Ronnie Del Carmen's path to directing major feature films was a long and winding one. Born in Cavite City in the Philippines in 1959, Del Carmen had a middle class upbringing until the age of 11. It was then that Del Carmen's father, Rogelio, discovered after sinking his family's savings into what became a profitable business venture, that one of his partners had stolen all the business' money and disappeared. The Del Carmen family was plunged into poverty. Del Carmen's father would emigrate to the United States a few years later, hoping to find opportunities to improve his family's situation, Meanwhile, Del Carmen worked and saved, and eventually enrolled at the University of Santo Tomas a few years behind his peers. After graduating, he worked in advertising until the day he heard from his father again, asking him to join him in America. The move meant starting his career over, but he decided to take the risk. While he found no opportunities in the U.S. in his own field, he eventually found work in animation, an area he had long had interest in, but never pursued professionally. He began working in the animation department on the show "Where's Waldo?" (CBS, 1991), and quickly moved on to projects like the critically acclaimed "Batman: The Animated Series" (Fox, 1992-1995). In 2000, he joined the team at Pixar. Del Carmen made his debut as a feature film director with the cerebral hit "Inside Out" (2015).