BERNIE YAO was born in the capital city of Taiwan and raised in Burnaby, British Columbia. He landed his first Guest Star role in 2009 on Nickelodeon's monster show The Troop, before shifting his focus to behind the camera, graduating in 2012 with a BFA in Filmmaking from Emily Carr University. Bernie worked mainly as a Producer and Director in the following years, with Producer credits on five feature films, including the award-winning feature Hello Destroyer, which premiered at TIFF in 2016.

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He began training at Haven with Ben Immanuel in 2019. Having studied under two Independent Directors during University that were long-time collaborators of Ben, Bernie was a huge fan of Ben's body work as an Actor & Director.

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In 2022, Bernie began teaching youth programs at Opus Academy, with classes ranging from Speech, Communication to Drama.