Angela Bates is proud to lead the First Nation’s Department at Screen Australia since September 2021. She joined the department in 2019 as a Development and Investment Manager, where she managed a slate of projects from Feature Film, TV Drama Series and children’s animation to documentaries, including We Are Still Here (a Co-Production between Australia and New Zealand), Award-winning TV Drama Total Control Series 2, Little J & Big Cuz 3, Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky and a new TV Crime Drama True Colours.

Angela Bates hails from Country New South Wales and is a proud Aboriginal and Maori woman. She has a background in journalism and worked at both the ABC and SBS. Her proudest achievement is setting up the first nightly National Indigenous News service in 2008 as its inaugural Executive Producer, overseeing its rapid growth including the it’s free-to-air launch in 2012.

Angela got her start at the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association in Alice Springs before travelling the country as a video journalist covering First Nations stories extensively for SBS’ Living Black. Angela has written, produced and directed live election panels, and a one-off travel show, Postcards in Taiwan. In 2012, she wrote and directed and produced a documentary Homelands for NITV.

She has a Master of Arts Screen: Business and Leadership from the Australian, Film, Television and Radio School. She spent a year in Winnipeg, Canada, in 2015 & 2016 working for the World Indigenous Television Broadcasters Network hosted by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.