03/28/2021
Meet the team! This is Yazmin Ruiz-Daruda, a team member of Kodjoarts since 2012. She first rekindled her interest in filmmaking while she was attending Columbus College of Arts & Design, where she received her BFA for Cinematic Arts in 2015. Originally thinking she was going to pursue a career in animation, she took a video class at Columbus College of Art & Design and decided to throw herself into filmmaking wholeheartedly. Filmmaking and photography reignited her vigor for storytelling, a passion that dated all the way back to her childhood. As much as she enjoyed animation, there was an enthusiasm that she felt when she was behind the camera.
Around the same time that Yazmin decided to pursue filmmaking, she met Kodjo, with whom she took on a team project. There were challenges that they needed to meet, and in the course of meeting and overcoming those challenges, they discovered a chemistry conducive to the creative process. While building their business together, they overcame new challenges and achieved goals through teamwork that only cemented their dedication to filmmaking and entrepreneurship even further. Together, they are always looking to expand into different genres of filming to keep their minds active and explore new areas of creativity. Filming weddings is one of her favorite things to be a part of, and getting to hear every couples love story and seeing how in love they are is a consistently wonderful experience. Yazmin is happily married to her high school sweetheart Jacob. Sharing everything together, they have grown to become best friends. They know how to support one another and encourage one another to follow their dreams and live up to their full potential. They have four fur babies at home, an Australian Shepherd Blue Merle named Malcolm, a fluffy black cat named Jinx, Short haired cat named Francis and their newest member an orange cat named Pabu. Yazmin's favorite pastimes are painting, yoga, photography, and learning Japanese. She has plans to travel to Japan in the near future.
