After spending my first few years out of college working as an investment banker - uniformed in business suits and pumps, equipped with a briefcase and forever waiting to experience the supposed thrill of quarter-point fluctuations in interest rates - I felt as though I’d discovered nirvana when the first task assigned to me by a creative director when I began my new career in advertising production was to search for a cool piece of music for a new business pitch and transcribe the lyrics.
Since that first day, I’ve been incredibly fortunate in my career, beginning with the generous senior creatives and producers I met years ago at Allen and Dorward in San Francisco who took me under their wings while I learned the basics of radio and television production, and continuing through to the moment I first read the fabulous scripts I’d been hired to produce at then Goodby Berlin and Silverstein to launch the agency’s “Got Milk” campaign.
I worked at GSP in San Francisco for almost fifteen years, first as a producer and then executive producer on Milk, Discover Card, Budweiser and Comcast. After relocating to the Seattle area in 2006 with my husband and our two children, falling in love with our new Labrador retriever puppy and then a horse, I continued to freelance for GSP.
When an opportunity arose to challenge myself with a different aspect of production, I joined Advertising Production Resources in 2008 as a consultant to manage its new relationship with Microsoft. Through that experience, I sharpened my skills in many of the business aspects of production, including globalization and integrating production across media. Additionally, I gained a unique insight into the world of advertising from the client’s perspective.
After a little over one year at APR, I decided to return to the world of agency production, to the job that continually exposes me to the many smart, talented and truly interesting people who not only inspire me on a daily basis to grow creatively, technically and intellectually, but who also make me laugh.
Someone asked me once if I had any kind of a basic philosophy when it comes to producing. In a nutshell, my answer was this:
Be honest and be nice. Treat people with respect. Look for and focus on what’s good and enjoy all that you find there. Don’t worry about the crap that pops up along the way – just figure out the best way to deal with it and learn. And understand how truly lucky we are to be in this business – the whole thing is a pretty amazing ride.