First off, “Welcome to NYWIFT!” — Can you tell us a little about yourself and your work in the industry?
I grew up In NYC and moved out to Los Angeles after graduating from college to pursue a career in the entertainment industry. I started working in the mailroom at the Paradigm talent agency. I had great mentors there, good timing, and was quickly promoted into the agent trainee program and then on to the position of TV Literary Department Coordinator.
I ultimately decided I was more interested in creative development and production than in talent representation, and after two and a half years, I left Paradigm to go work briefly at a production company at CBS TV Studios, before joining the original programming department at Starz.
At Starz, I worked on Spartacus, Magic City, Boss, and the upcoming DaVinci’s Demons. The opportunity to work at a premium cable network, specifically under Chris Albrecht, was fantastic, and it was during my time there that I gained a much broader perspective of the business side of the industry. I became acutely aware of the shifts occurring in entertainment, particularly at the affect of emerging technologies.
I also very much felt the pull back to NYC and decided this past fall to move back and work with Rohit Pursram at his startup mobile media company, Activation Media. We have been developing a mobile native entertainment delivery platform, which is social, personalized, and interactive, and additionally provides significant analytics on its back end.
What made you decide to join NYWIFT?
I went to a NYWIFT event on Transmedia and met one of the NYWIFT Board members, Amanda Lin Costa, who encouraged me to join. I have such a large and invaluable network of entertainment industry friends and contacts in Los Angeles, and am looking forward to expanding my network here on the East Coast. I hope joining NYWIFT will be part of this process of continuing to form new relationships.
Anything exciting you in the industry right now that you’d like to share with other NYWIFT members?
All the creative development that is bound to happen in mobile entertainment and streaming technology. In the same way that TV shows did not exist before televisions existed, I think the same thing goes for tablets and mobile platforms. I don’t believe we’ve discovered the ideal form of storytelling for these new platforms and the exploration and discovery to come is very exciting. Some really cool and innovative storytelling apps I’ve come across are CIA: Operation Ajax and Bottom of the Ninth.
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