Birthdate: Apr 26, 1985
Birthplace: Oakland, California
Justin Tipping is a director/writer/producer from Oakland, California who won the Student Academy Award for his AFI thesis film, Nani (2011), and then made his feature debut as director/co-writer (with Joshua Beirne-Golden) of the coming-of-age drama, Kicks (2016), starring Jahking Guillory, Christopher Jordan Wallace, Christopher Meyer, Kofi Siriboe and Mahershala Ali, premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival and better received by critics (88% Rotten Tomatoes score) than at the box office for distributor Focus World ($150,000 approximately against a $10 million budget).
Tipping, after directing for television and streaming episodic series from 2018 to 2022 (including the series The Chi (2018-2019) and Dear White People (2019), partnered with producer Jordan Peele as director/co-writer (with credited co-writers Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers) of the sports-horror movie, Him (2025), with Marlon Wayans, Tyriq Withers, and Julia Fox, produced by Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions and released wide by Universal Pictures.
Justin Tipping was born and raised in Oakland, California, by his parents. Tipping is of Filipino, Swedish and Danish descent. Tipping attended and graduated from El Cerrito High School in Oakland. Tipping was at first a Business Economics major at the University of California, Santa Barbara, but then changed his major to Film and Media Studies, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Tipping earned his MFA at the American Film Institute Conservatory, where he made his thesis short film, Nani, which won a Student Academy Award.
Realization: Justin Tipping has commented that he “grew up never understanding I could be (a filmmaker) and I never thought of it until I was…in college.” He added that he didn’t “see anyone that represents me or reflects my experiences on screen; why can’t I be the one to tell that story? So I kind of made that choice.”
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