Kimberly Peirce staked her place as a writer and director of singular vision and craft with her unflinching debut feature, Boys Don't Cry (Hilary Swank, Chloë Sevingy, Peter Sarsgaard), which earned numerous honors including Best Actress Oscar for star, Hilary Swank, Golden Globe, Independent Spirit, NY and LA Film Critics, and National Board of Review Awards. Co star, Chloe Sevigny was nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe and won the Independent Spirit Award and LA film Critic awards for Best Supporting Actress. Peirce won honors as Best Debut Director from the National Board of Review and the Boston Society of Film Critics. The film received the Best Film International Critics prize at the London and Stockholm Film Festivals, the Satyajit Ray Award, and was named “Best American Feature” by Janet Maslin.

Peirce subsequently co-wrote and directed Stop-Loss(Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Abbie Cornish, Ryan Phillipe), a topical and emotionally penetrating drama inspired by real-life stories of American soldiers, including her brother, fighting in Iraq. Peirce won the Hamilton Behind the Camera True-Grit and Andrew Sarris Directing Awards.

In 2013 Peirce directed Carrie (Julianne Moore, Chloë Moretz, introducing Ansel Elgort). The film won the 2014 People’s Choice Award for Favorite Horror Movie. The film was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film and won for Best Young Actor.

Kimberly has directed episodes of acclaimed cable TV shows: John Ridley’s American Crime (Felicity Huffman, Regina King, Timothy Hutton, Lilly Taylor), AMC’s Turn (Jamie Bell) and Halt and Catch Fire (Lee Pace, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot Mcnairy), Manhattan (Rachel Brosnahan, Benjamin Hickey), History Channel’s Six (Walton Goggins) for which she won an Women's Image Award, Jill Solowayear’s I Love Dick (Kevin Bacon, Kathryn Hahn, Griffin Dunne), and Justin Simien’s Dear White People (Logan Browning). She is Executive Producer and Director of Impact at A&E.

She is next directing two films: This is Jane, the true story of the women who started the 1960’s Chicago illegal underground abortion ring, starring Michelle Williams and Untitled, a butch femme romantic, sex comedy.

A tireless activist for human and civil rights, Kimberly is a founding member of Reframe, an industry-wide effort to end discrimination against women and people of color. In 2018, she was honored with the Susan B. Anthony Award and the Women in Film Activism award. She spoke at the following venues on human rights, diversity, intersectionality and equality for gender identity and sexual preference: 2017 Park City Women's March; 2016 American Film Institute, 2015 Outfest, 2014 Yale Transgender Week, and 2013 Columbia Film School. She has received the GLAAD Media, Lambda Legal Defense, People for the American Way, Lesbian Anti-Violence Project and the OUTFEST Career Achievement Awards. 

She is a proud to be a Governor of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, head of the Diversity Committee, and Executive Board member of the Director's Guild of America, and a member of Time’s Up and the WGA.

Kimberly received her BA from the University of Chicago, her MFA from Columbia University Graduate Film and graduated from Sundance Institute's Writing, Directing, and Producing Labs.