Air Force Veteran Takes Flight as Filmmaker

For 20 years, Shana Figueroa ’01, MS ’06, did a variety of jobs in the U.S. Air Force as a commander and aerospace engineer, working on satellites and rockets, serving a tour in Afghanistan, moving from one side of the country to the other.

Now? She’s making comedy and horror films about vengeful uptight housewives, time loops involving zombie apocalypses, demon-summoning college students, and soccer moms moonlighting as private investigators.

“I love telling stories, and it also has an exciting creative aspect,” says Figueroa of filmmaking. “I love that it mixes a bunch of different creative fields.”

Figueroa, an aerospace engineering major, retired in 2021 as a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. Shortly thereafter, she enrolled at Emerson College in Boston to pursue a long-held dream of learning the technical ins and outs of filmmaking.

“I didn’t really know anything about the film industry, or how it technically works,” she acknowledges. She previously thought she’d make a go of it as an author and has written several short stories and novels. But novel writing can be an isolating process, she notes, “and when you’re done, only your mom reads it, or a tiny handful of people read it.” Filmmaking, by contrast, is more collaborative and provides more “instant gratification.”

She’s made a handful of short films so far, among them: L’Amour, about a housewife who discovers her husband’s kinky side; Forever War, in which a soldier trapped in a time loop must continually save his parents from a zombie apocalypse; and A Dame for All Seasons, where a soccer mom moonlighting as a private investigator must protect herself from a dangerous client.

Her films have been screened at numerous film festivals, including the 2025 Boston Underground Film Festival, and have earned several awards: Forever War won Best Horror Short at the 2024 Shawna Shea Film Festival, Best Sci-Fi Horror Short Film at the 2024 Chicago Horror Film Festival, and Best Director and Best Actor at the 2024 L.A. Crime and Horror Film Festival. Further, her documentary film The Socialists of Shoe City won Best Documentary Short at the 2025 Shawna Shea Film Festival.

Figueroa just wrapped another film over the summer. The plot: A camper shares a round-the-campfire story involving the murder of his friend’s sister. He laughs it off as fiction, but, Figueroa notes, “He’s not kidding. Things go down, then the ghost shows up.”

She is planning another shoot this fall—about a struggling single mother who is offered a small fortune to torture her neighbor—and will dedicate 2026 to finishing up a script for a full-length feature film. “I’m trying to pick up the pace,” Figueroa says. “The more films you make, the better you get. You’ll never get any better if you’re using all your money trying to make this one perfect film. A lot of people fall into that trap.”

Ultimately, Figueroa has set a goal for herself: Two short films a year for under $10,000. This micro-budget has to be stretched as much as possible, so she works with a small group of other local indie filmmakers who regularly collaborate on each other’s projects.

Getting creative with location is another cost saver. Figueroa regularly films inside her own home or, in the case of the killer camper story, in the woods behind her in-laws’ house. That film was shot to look like it takes place in the deep woods but was really only about 20 feet away from civilization.

Shoots take an incredible amount of work, often requiring 10- to 12-hour days. Figueroa aims to keep them short (two days is ideal) and to be mindful of crew members’ time because they’re not being paid much. Feeding them well is also important.

One area where the WPI alumna doesn’t like to cut corners, however, is acting. She is “pretty picky” about casting and hires professionals through online sources like Backstage. “A lot of people will use their friends,” she notes. But, “you ruin your film when you have a bad actor.” Similarly, it’s important not to skimp on sound. While people may tolerate less-than-perfect visuals, “you can’t get away with unintelligible sound,” says Figueroa. “It’ll immediately lower the quality of the film.”

Even though it may be intense, Figueroa finds the collaborative process of filmmaking deeply rewarding. From the cinematographer and camera operator to the wardrobe designer, prop handler, and set decorator, everyone brings something to it. “It’s awesome that it turns into something that you all made as a team,” she says.

Figueroa’s family has a long military history; her mother and father were both in the Air Force, and she joined the ROTC and was commissioned as a U.S. Air Force second lieutenant. Her husband, Christopher St. Yves ’01, also attended WPI (making them a “true WPI couple”) and moved with her from Hanscom Air Force Base to Cape Canaveral to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and beyond, until she retired in 2021.

“I led a totally different life before going into the film business; it gives me a unique perspective I think a lot of other filmmakers don’t have,” she says, also emphasizing how WPI helped her exercise her analytical mind. Ultimately, Figueroa notes, “It’s never too late to change or to start a new adventure in life.”