Judyann Elder is a veteran actress who began her professional career in New York as a resident actor with the Tony Award winning Negro Ensemble Company and made her Broadway debut as Coretta Scott King in I Have a Dream. With innumerable television and film credits, she most recently made guest star appearances on ER and Blind Justice and can be seen as Nana Loretta in the Disney show That's So Raven.

A Theatre Arts Major at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, Ms. Elder received the Carol Burnett Award in the Performing Arts upon graduation. Ms. Elder has directed critically acclaimed stage productions of The Meeting and Ceremonies in Dark Old and was honored with membership in the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women where she directed Behind God's Back, based on a short story by Alice Walker and starring Beau Bridges. She was the recipient of a Screenwriting Fellowship with the Walt Disney Studios and has taught acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. 

The mother of three children from her marriage to writer Lonne Elder, III, Ms. Elder  was honored in 2005 with a Trailblazer Award from the Beverly Hills branch of the NAACP as a founding member of the Negro Ensemble Company.