American director who launched Star Trek: Picard by directing its first three episodes in 2020, having earlier directed for Star Trek: Discovery, to which she later returned.
Hanelle Culpepper, sometimes credited as Hanelle M. Culpepper, is an American film and television director from Birmingham, Alabama. Her wider credits include episodes of Criminal Minds and the pilot of the 2021 series Kung Fu, on which she was also a co-executive producer.
She first worked on Star Trek with Vaulting Ambition, a Mirror Universe episode in the first season of Discovery, and came back in the third season for Forget Me Not.
Culpepper was chosen to set the look of Star Trek: Picard, directing Remembrance, Maps and Legends and The End Is the Beginning, the three episodes that bring Jean-Luc Picard out of retirement and aboard La Sirena. She was the first woman to direct the opening episode of a Star Trek series.