Tchaiko moved to the U.S. fourteen years ago and graduated from Columbia University with a degree in African American studies. She spent her formative years traveling the world with her father who worked for UNICEF. She lived in seven different countries where she witnessed the best and worst of humanity. There was war and abject poverty but there was also the beauty of people, their stories and their countriesʼ landscapes. At Columbia she interned for Spike Lee and Mira Nair. After assisting George C. Wolfe on his feature film Nights In Rodanthe, he became her mentor emphasizing the importance of learning to work with actors. Tchaiko went on to work with British director Tom Vaughan who also became her mentor and encouraged her to pursue her filmmaking by using the resources available to her - resulting in her making Solace - the feature film as a DIY project. Tchaiko produced a short film called His/Herstory www.msoyonline.com/hisherstory/thestory.htm debuting at the Toronto Film Festival. She went on to direct a short documentary, Americaʼs Shadows...HIV Risk in Black and Latino Youth. Then followed this with directing music videos, most notably one for Meshell Ndegeocelloʼs artist Jason Lindner "Big Pump" . She was featured on the RSA Films’ Black Dog website from 2009-2010 as one of their music video directors. She transitioned into narratives and wrote and directed the short film Solace. The feature script for Solace was a semi-finalist for the 2012 Sundance Writer’s Lab. She continues to explore her writing/directing interest in the industry shadowing director Jeannot Szwarc on his Grey’s Anatomy episode and recently working with George C. Wolfe again on his feature "You’re Not You" starring Hillary Swank and Emmy Rossum.
