Powerful Womxn Who Are Changing The World: Hillary Cohen and Sam Luu

An Interview with Natalie Ruiz

As part of my series about “Powerful Womxn Who Are Changing The World”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Hillary Cohen and Sam Luu, who both currently work in television as Assistant Directors on NCIS LA while running Every day Action, which is a non-profit organization committed to re-allocating food waste on film sets directly to those living on the streets of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and the San Fernando Valley.

I am thrilled to highlight Hillary Cohen and Sam Luu and the amazing work they’re doing with their organization!

Hillary graduated college in 2007 with a Bachelor’s degree in both theater and film from Clark University. Upon graduation, she relocated back to her roots in Southern California to pursue a career in the entertainment business. After working for a year and a half as a talent scout and booking assistant at Nous Model Management, she was accepted into the 2009 Assistant Director’s Training Program.

In the program she worked on shows such as The Office, Men of a Certain Age, Criminal Minds, Private Practice, and Mad Men; where she graduated and began working as an add’l 2nd Assistant Director.

In 2012, Hillary began working on NCIS: LA, and is where she still currently works. She began as an add’l 2nd AD and is currently the 1st AD in charge of COVID testing and has UPMed 6 episodes of the series.

I addition to her work in the DGA, Hillary is also the CEO and founder of the new non-profit, Every Day Action. Every Day Action’s main focus is reallocating food waste from catering on film sets to those in need in Los Angeles. Her goal is to run Every Day Action on a full-time basis in the near future; in hopes of picking up the food from every single set in Southern California

Sam is a native of Arkansas and she graduated in 2006 from Ouachita University with a bachelor’s degree in mass and speech communications with an emphasis in broadcast television. Two weeks after graduation, she moved to LA to pursue a career in film and tv. While interning at a small production company, Sam began to work on indie sets as a non-union 2nd assistant director mostly, sometimes other crew positions —…