Yasmin Ahmad
Yasmin Ahmad (7 January 1958 – 25 July 2009) was a film director, writer and scriptwriter from Malaysia and was also the executive creative director at Leo Burnett Kuala Lumpur. Her television commercials and films are well known in Malaysia for their humour, heart and love that crosses cross-cultural barriers, in particular her ads for Petronas, the national oil and gas company. Her works have won multiple awards both within Malaysia and internationally. However, in Malaysia itself, her films are highly controversial since they depict events and relationships seen as forbidden by social conservatives, especially hard-line interpretations of Islam.
Early life and career
Yasmin was born in Kampung Bukit Treh in Muar, Johor on 7 January 1958. A graduate in arts majoring in politics and psychology from Newcastle University in England, she worked as a trainee banker in 1982 for two weeks then working for IBM as a marketing representative while moonlighting as a blues singer and pianist by night. Yasmin began her career in advertising as a copywriter at Ogilvy & Mather and in 1993 she moved to Leo Burnett as joint creative director with Ali Mohammed, eventually rising to executive creative director at the firm's Kuala Lumpur branch.