Jillian Mercado

Jillian Mercado is an American fashion model and actress represented by CAA (Los Angeles). Born on April 30, 1987, she is a wheelchair user due to spastic muscular dystrophy, making her one of the few professional models in the fashion industry with a visible physical disability. Mercado is known for challenging traditional beauty ideals and advocating against the stigma and lack of representation facing people with disabilities in fashion.

Mercado was born and raised in New York, New York, is of Dominican ancestry, and has two younger sisters. Diagnosed with spastic muscular dystrophy as a child, she developed an early interest in fashion influenced by her mother, a dressmaker, and her father, a former shoe salesman. Between 2006 and 2010, she studied fashion merchandising at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, completing internships at Veranda and Allure magazine. She also volunteered at Fashion Week for several years, which led to opportunities covering events for Patrick McMullan's PMc Magazine.

Mercado's modeling career began in 2014 when she was selected by Nicola Formichetti to feature in a campaign for the designer denim brand Diesel. The campaign's success led to a modeling contract with IMG Models in August 2015, facilitated by IMG Models President Ivan Bart. She went on to star in campaigns for Nordstrom and appeared in Carine Roitfeld's CR Fashion Book, where she was photographed by Michael Avedon.

In March 2016, Mercado was selected as one of three models for a campaign on Beyoncé's official website, promoting merchandise for the singer's single and 2016 Formation world tour. Later that spring, she featured in a Target Corporation marketing campaign that debuted during Telemundo's Billboard Latin Music Awards. She subsequently appeared in editorial features for Glamour and Cosmopolitan in September 2016, and landed her first magazine cover with Posture Magazine by the end of that year.

In February 2017, Mercado appeared in an editorial feature for Galore magazine. Expanding her career into acting, she began playing the character Maribel on the television series The L Word: Generation Q in 2019. In 2022, she starred as the lead character, Sonya, in the short film My Eyes Are Up Here.