TARYN O’NEILL is an actress, writer, web series producer and co-founder of the Actresses for STEM group SCIRENS. Born in Vancouver Canada, she spent her childhood as a competitive figure skater and was a national medalist in Ice Dancing. She graduated from Duke University with a degree in Economics, Theater and Film, the latter bringing her to LA to spend a semester at The USC Film School. She spent her early years in Hollywood at the William Morris Agency and Alliance Atlantis Communications before transitioning into acting. She has worked on numerous commercials and such shows as NCIS, VEGAS and LIE TO ME before being cast as the recurring character ‘June Sanders’ on BYUTV’s 1960’s family drama GRANITE FLATS.
In the midst of pursuing her acting career, Taryn became an early pioneer in New Media producing the 2009 Streamy nominated scifi web series AFTER JUDGMENT and its follow up HURTLING THROUGH SPACE AT AN ALARMING RATE. She has also acted in over 20 web series including the award winning show COMPULSIONS, for which she won Best Supporting Actress at the Indie Soap Awards in 2010. Spearheading her shows’ social media campaigns inspired her to start a blog, which lead her to adding script writing to her repertoire. In 2010, her first comedy script, “The Very True Adventures of the Madoff Girls,” was a Finalist in the NYTVFest FOX Comedy Pilot Contest. She most recently wrote a full length digital series for STAN LEE and Michael Eisner’s VUGURU’S YouTube channel and has numerous web and tv projects in development, scifi being her genre of choice. Her love of scifi inspired her to study the science behind the fiction and it developed into a full passion for numerous STEM fields. This passion has culminated in the formation of SCIRENS, a group of four ‘sci-enthusiastic’ actresses dedicated to using their social media platforms for science outreach and advocacy, with the ultimate goal being to create content that infuses science and accurate STEM characters into mainstream media. In her free time she blogs for Women in Entertainment site MS. IN THE BIZ, geeks out over ‘Game of Thrones’ and trains in Martial Arts.