Kaya Ugorji (b. 2002) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, California. She works as an actor and does occasional work in production as a costume designer, photographer, and filmmaker bringing characters to life in more ways than one.

Kaya grew up incredibly shy, usually the quietest person in the room. When she was a sophomore high school, she decided to take a step outside of her comfort zone and enroll in an improvisation class. It was in this class that Kaya discovered her love of drama and theatre. This newfound passion would stick with Kaya for years, later pushing her to commit to pursuing acting as a career in her adulthood.

Before committing to an acting career, Kaya was working toward a career in the fashion industry. She attended the Fashion Institute of Technology, earning an associate degree in Fashion Design and a bachelor’s degree in Fabric Styling. After studying design, Kaya realized she was interested studying fashion as it functions within the entertainment industry. She shifted her academic focus from fashion design to styling and costume design, and worked as a stylist, creative director, and fashion photographer on a number of student projects. She gradually narrowed her focus onto photography and costuming, and returned to acting realizing that it was her passion for the dramatic arts and storytelling that was calling her to work in entertainment.

In 2025, Kaya founded a business venture called Von Ugo. Von Ugo is a creative enterprise exploring the use of costume in photography and cinema. The enterprise functions through three main facets: exhibition curation, media production, and a digital public archive and database. Von Ugo shines a light on the significance of costume, photography, and cinema in the arts, while platforming local artists and developing ways to preserve communal experiences through art creation, research, and curation.  Through Von Ugo, Kaya aims to make fashion and costume studies more accessible for aspiring artists, while creating more opportunities for working artists to collaborate.

Kaya considers herself to be a storyteller at her core. She believes her work in acting, photography, and costuming is synergetic. Her ultimate goal as an artist is to encourage people to find drama in the mundane and look for meaning within art. When she is acting, she finds herself getting swept up into new worlds, deeply moved by art and creativity for the sake of storytelling. When she works in production as a photographer and costume designer, it is her goal to craft worlds that allow everyone to experience being moved and swept up by art as well.