Uma Somal

Uma Somal was born in Somalia and came to the United States when she was 6 1/2 years old. Throughout her childhood years she had always been fascinated by the arts; whether it was acting, musical theater, dancing, and signing. She participated in all the artsy clubs in middle and high school performing at her schools talent shows. When Uma was around 10 years old, she remembers sitting at home watching That's So Raven mimicking everything Raven was doing, not till the show was over did she notice her whole family watching her silently holding in laughs. That's when she discovered her passion, but it never crossed her mind that acting was an activity she could do as a career because acting was not seen as a "working job" it was fun and enjoyable; because in her culture a job was supposed to be hard and something you didn't really love. Not till Uma's freshman year of college, while sitting in a huge dark lecture hall taking notes on chemistry did she drift off to Uma land and started daydreaming about stories. Uma finally realized she would rather use her imagination and heart to play make believe then sit there memorizing the periodic table. From then on she did theater, short films, and started taking acting classes.