(I started reading and writing around three years of age and spoke at a very early age - unnaturally early if you hear my family tell it. With six older siblings I was the singing, dancing, story telling Gemini baby that would be last born. With older siblings coaching, I learned a lot by the time we moved from my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio to Atlanta. I had written lots before, but most stand out was a play in seventh grade -"Love Is All It Takes" that I developed into a musical after too many spins of the Dreamgirls soundtrack and a Fame album I got from WSB Radio; where I worked from age thirteen to about fifteen on and off. I still have my first check from this radio and TV station where my brother, Charles Garel, was assistant program director. I was the station's mascot, the Wisbee, and wore this oversize bee suit at live remotes for five dollars an hour. One summer I didn't work radio so I wrote the play.

I was dedicated to staging it, but could never raise the money to fit the vision. I had every talented person I knew starring in it. I wrote the songs, script, casted, planned to direct it....that play actually burned me out at fourteen! Yet amazingly I ended up selling it when I was fifteen to a San Diego based actor for about two hundred bucks. A year later I landed a bit part as a featured extra (the lead's high school sweetheart, mostly showcased in photo albums and in the sad funeral scene briefly, in a Morgan Freeman starred Hallmark movie called A Resting Place... I had arrived in my head.... I jetted to LA for a brief spell at sixteen to try out for Head of The Class and attempt to be another light skinned extra on A Different World... silly lil green Gigi...

Already out on the career prowl early, I was looking solely for steady showbiz gigs from that point on. By seventeen I began writing for small pay for a local actress/producer - Diana McClenton. She was doing a local cable TV show and was advertising for writers one summer. I applied for the gig and got it and was treated like a star. I met a lot of good friends in that period. I wrote some wild stuff and had so much fun as I learned to write for TV - I was fast and good! They gave me a going away party and by years end I moved to California.)

Between 1989 and 1994 she started her film production company Meridian Pics/GG Films. She also acted as co-executive director of Westside Stories, Inc. an Atlanta based production company producing music videos directed by Keith Ward (TLC, Arrested Development, Duran Duran, Brandy) and commercials (Sprite, McDonalds.) The team worked during those years under an umbrella formed by Garel & Ward called Noir Cinema (Featured on BET Screen Scenes 1991).

During this period she also wrote, directed and produced six short films in one year, of which Mine Enemy, about two soldiers standing guard at the Berlin Wall in 1960, was featured on PBS, at the Berlin Film Festival (hosted by Julie Dash's Daughter's of The Dust) and shown in part on BET's Screen Scenes.

(When I left Cali I moved back to Atlanta in '89 and the vibe was all post Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It. Everybody was making movies. I befriended talent like Bill Nunn (Pre Do The Right Thing) and comedians like Steve Harvey and Rex Garvin, who were my aces for a great time between '89 and '91. Many great acts came through Atlanta at that time; living and working in the theatre area I met them all. Especially greats who became buddies, like Tahj Mahal, Tico Wells, Starletta Dupois and Kenny Leon. I taught acting classes for extra money, coaching talent like Speech and Cory Zooman Miller. I introduced Zooman to acting/comedy after he rocked the piece Zooman and The Sign in my class. Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, Emil Johnson and Jamie Fox were in town so I introduced Cory to them and that world. He's been flying ever since. I wrote lots of spooky tales by day, while by night, it was jokes for Bill Nunn's stand up routine at a jazz cafe he hosted some nights. Bill really believed in me and gave me a lot of support, as did Kenny Leon and so many from that time. I met everybody hanging with those cats from an early Sam Jackson, Spike Lee and Miles Davis ... to (thanks to Rex Garvin) every notable comic working today.

I eventually met some filmmakers doing their thing around town. Keith Ward was fresh out of Clark and so were his pals like Tommy Burns. Whenever I had an idea, they always managed to find film and equipment. Everyone was always down to help make our movies. I could have a dream one night and the next day we were making a 16mm film about it. Dr. Herb Eickleberger (Spike Lee and others had Dr. E's help early on as well) over at Clark's Communication's Dept. would loan us cameras and Nagras etc. He later helped me broker my feature film deal... Big ups to Dr. E for my early film career. Back to back the movies came and we were highly respected for getting good work out. Keith and I teamed up and formed Noir Cinema and began doing music videos; one after another as the budgets got bigger and bigger. We went from shooting the winning BET/Cheryl Lynn video competition for $500 to doing Jermaine Dupree's group Javier and The Str8jackers (with a young, chubby faced Kris Kross duo and Jermaine tossing a cereal box) to A Day In The Life of Arrested Development -the movie, (paid for by Speech's Dad at the time) and finally to the first big budget project for the camp and Keith's mainstream directorial break with Digital Underground's No Nose Job. We milked the 'video for around $15,000' (mostly for Ichiban and independently released artists) cash cow for as long as it worked. On into TLC's Baby, Baby, Baby where my, then, fiancé designed the set, while I co-produced with Kim Moye and Keith Ward directed.

Wanting to make movies more than videos, I applied for a grant with Fulton County Arts Council with a feature I wrote called Fine and Wine and got $10,000 or so. I started casting and got some respectable talent interested, (including an early Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, Jonathan Slocum, Tasha Smith, John Amos, Roslyn Cash and Jamie Fox - many of whom passed through the theatre district and/or stayed in the nearby comic's apartment during the Comedy Act days in Atlanta). I packaged it beautifully with my first business plan - one of many to follow. It helped me to get a consortium of bloodsucking businessmen to back me with a security bond of $3.5 million and I relocated to NY to make it happen. I was twenty-one and it was more than a notion...)

Gia'na has been the recipient of various grants and awards for her independent film production and writing. She was featured in Upscale magazine's 1994 'Upwardly Mobile' column and twice featured on BET's Screen Scenes. Her independent films have been screen via PBS and various film festivals between 1990- 1992.

(What beats you up most in this industry is when you pile on the hopes and dreams of so many people with your own- the talent who have allied with you on your projects... your friends who have supported you... and try to do so much, yet feel you've failed them in the end. Usually you aren't seasoned enough. What then saves many burned out showbiz folks is family. So in this era of the mid 90's I started one. Ashley Michelle, and much later Golden Bless, are my greatest productions to date. My husband, by that time, was a huge support and encouraged my writing so stability allowed me time to create numerous spec scripts. During that period, for example, my old partner Keith Ward called saying he was talking movie deals with Belmark, Al Bell (Staxx Records) and his nephew over there. They had Prince, temporarily called The Artist, and Keith promised a hot script to them. In two weeks (which was becoming my signature finishing time by then) I had Death Of A Starchild written. One of my specs, The Bounty Hunter (which had cast my best buddy Leslie Big Lez Segar who planned to be the Pam Grier of the nineties) caught the eye of manager/producer Lee Daniels (pre Monster's Ball). I signed an option agreement with him, followed by a management contract. I was writing, mothering and turning out huge volumes of content. BET's Screen Scenes hosted by Suzette Charles and Melvin Lindsey at the time, featured my film Mine Enemy and followed up with another show where I was interviewed. Following that I was featured in Upscale Magazine's Upwardly Mobile column. By then I was using my married name as a hyphen, Garel-Walker.)

In 1995 Garel relocated to Los Angeles, California and Co founded A-List Consultants, Inc. an entertainment consulting firm that worked with industry publicists (such as Lilli Unger, Denyse Parks and Tashion Macon) to create cross over campaigns for artists looking to connect with film/TV, publishing and fashion. Clients included Chuck D, Big Lez, Usher Raymond, Cory "Zooman" Miller, TLC and others.

(I moved to LA where I started a partnership with a youngish cat I had met during pitch season during my Lee Daniels days. Todd Smith brought an air of nefariousness later on to the business, however he was well connected, and that couldn't be denied; nor the fact that he at least understood the workings of Hollywood. He had a legit Beverly Hills address at the time for us to use, so I was cool. A-List Consultants was a fabulous idea. We would take my connections from years of music video introductions to hot music talent and tie them into the TV shows, movies, books and fashion deals etc. that Todd had cultivated in LA and abroad. I went to my girl Tashion Macon who was at La Face and later at Aftermath as head of marketing/PR. Tashion and Sherry over at La Face set me up with Sonia Marie, Donnell Jones any many other under plugged artists, giving me their packages and allowing me to run with them. One day Sherry asked could I please meet with Jonetta Patton and her son Usher Raymond about introducing him to some of the TV/Film opportunities I was into. We met in Beverly Hills, where we later introduced them to A-List's then publicist, Lilli Unger. Thereafter pitched to everyone from Moesha to Disney. We tried similar deals with TLC and Jermaine Dupree's label, whom his publicist Denyce Parks hooked me into. I would shop these acts into potential movie attachments, TV deals and anything that was off the radar. This done without usurping their agents and managers, but rather acting as a tie-in to these underground projects and businesses they would never have met otherwise. Comedian Cory Zooman Miller and rap legend Chuck D were my first clients to sign.)

Gia’na Garel has successfully prepared a niche in the entertainment industry by spreading her talents into all genres for over nineteen years; most notably as a writer (novelist, journalist, playwright, specs for film/TV) as an actress and performer, filmmaker (six film shorts, music videos, commercials and producer of the 2004 Stellar Award winner “Shook”) and entertainment business consultant (recent clients have included Marlon Jackson, Chuck D. 400 Films, DDL Entertainment, legendary MC Gorgeous George, painter Benjamin Allen, The Son's of Light (Formerly The Boys) Master Chef Afreeya Robinson and many others).

(I did a 'NY to LA to ATL' city triangle for many years until I settled on ATL again and met Alvin James and Marlon Jackson (of The Jacksons) with their ground level pre launch of the MBC Gospel Network. With funds backed by Attorney Willie Gary among others, this was my chance to produce and provide content, as staff producer, for a network's inception. At the press conference, announcing a network line up which mostly wasn't formed yet, Alvin had me speak, impromptu like, and it ended up a resounding speech, all on what the network would hold in store, mostly made up on the spot by myself, patched from conversations with Marlon and Alvin. In finishing, I got a pat on the back from Willie Gary, saying "you made us look real good in there"... From that auspicious occasion I started the ideas and learned the lessons behind building a multi-media vehicle from the ground up.

Marlon and his daughter Valencia Jackson (who'd had a show on the network) remained in touch and through the years developed other projects and consulted with me on different ideas in the works. Such as a televised, Fox targeted, Jackson brothers/Gary reunion, which was to be produced by Marlon's production company Vabritmar Entertainment. Marlon asked me and Jackson's manager, the illustrious Danny O'Donovan to co- produce it. Although it didn't complete it's development, I learned so much more, this time from someone like Danny O' Donovan, about producing televised concerts on this level. He'd produced concert specials for HBO for the likes of his clients Diana Ross, Barbra Striesand, Eric Clapton, The Who and Sammy Davis Jr. I was all ears and notes with this old school British cat.

Thereafter I co- produced a video with long time client Darryl D. Lassiter, DDL Entertainment, Inc., who had consulted with me prior to raising the funds for his film Pay The Price. I did a lovely business/marketing kit for him, subsequently he raised the money and shot the film. The video he called me on turned into two in two days - Vickie Winans' Shook and Happy and You Know It. I pulled together many of my own people (the gaffer, Carl Johnson, worked with me on A Resting Place, from when I was a mere teen!) and they cut us amazing deals to pull it off. The team was magnificent and it came out beautifully, winning the 2004 Stellar Award for Best Video. It was an old school video budget fo sho! I finished a novel, "In Pursuit of O" and a novella "The Insanity Clause" (I read two books simultaneously and seem to need to write them that way as well.) That's cool because now I have something to fluff up for the publishing side of my multi-media adventure without taking years off. Among my respected select readers they have gained a cult following and that's enough for a minute ... I wrote and composed a song "The Things You Do" and got my buddies Bilal (formerly Motown's The Boys) and PE/ Mobb Deep producer Kerwin Kasuf Young to help me record it. I felt like I had done a good amount of creativity for one year and it was time to chill with the babies and see the world. I set them up in a home school program that we could manage while traveling, and we let the spot on the map where our hamster, Butter, stopped be where we would go next. Thank God he didn't squat on any war zones.

Within a year the girls and I moved to Toronto, fortunately a big film/TV mecca, as the launch pad for the rest of our planned travels to Australia and Asia and so on.... A year later we were in NY for the holidays... I was studying Mandarin and by hilarious happenstance met Fish (Ling Yu), the owner of Pearl Daddy in Soho who had just bought a magazine in China. He invited me on as US editor and writer for a celebrity news column. They sent my pres pass (right) and I was ecstatic. That was all the rage until Chuck D said Air America Radio offered him a weekly radio show. Would I, the Gyp'see Mama, curtail my adventures everywhere to co-host and produce it? Would I? This May 29th we'll be one year into On The Real Radio... As Ya Gyp'see Ma I got a chance to host a season solo with a hot lil Saturday morning show called Off The Radar for NY's 1190 WLIB. I learned by application how to freak radio from soup to nuts... Now the adventure continues onto TV and publishing in 2007 and beyond)

Currently Gia'na is producer and co-host of the national talk radio show 'ON THE REAL', with rap icon Chuck D as well as an active writer and columnist internationally, She currently is writing a nonfiction book of essays entitled "The Sinister Plot Behind My Self Destruction" and is a dual resident of New York and Atlanta.