Tell me about yourself.
I grew up in Waukegan, Illinois, and graduated from Waukegan High School with honors in our college prep program. I worked and attend College of Lake County part time studying mass communications and sociology. There, I continued from high school, competing on our forensics and debate team before transferring to Columbia College Chicago.
At Columbia, I wanted to pursue my passion for film but also wanted to be practical in what I studied as the success rate in Hollywood is single digits. That is why I chose producing. This encompassed the business end of the industry including budgeting and scheduling along with project management and law.
I have taken these skills and applied them to recruitment. When I moved to Chicago to attend school, I caught in the "Recruitment bug". I learned quickly that recruiting and producing went hand in hand with each other.
After graduating from Columbia College Chicago, I attempted to find industry work in Chicago, but quickly realized that with union regulations that it would be better to work on my own endeavors. I started freelancing on projects before graduating and continue to do this in my free time. In the meanwhile, I stuck with recruiting as much as I could despite economic issues continuing in the country.
How would you describe your professional self?
I am a detail oriented employee that can work both independently and within a group. I like to organize workflows and figure out solutions to problems. When I get my feet wet at a new position, I like to look for improvements that would help the company and/or employees be more efficient.
What is your greatest weakness?
I am a perfectionist that can get lost in details. I have learned this can be an issue but always make my deadlines on time, if not earlier than expected.
Tell me about a challenge you have overcome.
I come from a family of military and first responders, and from an early age, I have had the mentality of proper planning prevents poor performance. The biggest challenge, which also taught me the most actually happened during my final semesters at Columbia College.
A month before school resumed, I had my principal crew in place and script. I also had approval from the school along with securing a professor to oversee my capstone project. This is the beginning of August and we were planning on filming the weekend before Halloween. Nothing could go wrong.
The script involved a piano professor and a relationship with a student..think Dead Poet's Society. A majority of the script we were filming at the school but we needed two additional locations: a piano bar and a way to fake out a car accident.
About two weeks out from filming is when everything that could go wrong started happening. My bank account got hacked and the money for the production was tied up with this issue. My director lost his job and his apartment. While dealing with the bank, I solved his problem by having him move in with me. We had to jump through a few hoops in order to film the piano bar, in part because we were filming at O'Hare International Airport. Yet, it was not until two days before we started filming that we finally got approval to film on campus.
Then my production designer, a week before we started filming, ended up in the hospital. My cinematographer and director stepped in to help cover for her. However, my cinematographer warned me he might deployed overseas. I raced to find backups, to no avail.
We get to the first day of filming and our lead actress calls to tell me she would be late. She had just had her hair dyed the night before and when she washed it, it became purple! We adjusted on the fly, and by the time she arrived I realized that she was also loosing her voice. She was a trooper and pushed through while I rearranged the schedule again to give her the next day off to rest. When filming our car accident sequence, we were interrupted by Chicago Police multiple times from my overly concerned neighbors-despite leaving notices for everyone in a two bock radius and having permits! Then the next morning, while unpacking our equipment at O'Hare International Airport, nursing our actress, dealing with security amongst everything else my boom operator tells me a $3000 piece of equipment was missing (we later pieced together it was stolen from set the night before and we were able to recover it within the week).
There was even more problems after production: technical issues and the fact I could not run around working on these problems due to a severe knee injury. The entire production taught me :
I grew up in Waukegan, Illinois, and graduated from Waukegan High School with honors in our college prep program. I worked and attend College of Lake County part time studying mass communications and sociology. There, I continued from high school, competing on our forensics and debate team before transferring to Columbia College Chicago.
At Columbia, I wanted to pursue my passion for film but also wanted to be practical in what I studied as the success rate in Hollywood is single digits. That is why I chose producing. This encompassed the business end of the industry including budgeting and scheduling along with project management and law.
I have taken these skills and applied them to recruitment. When I moved to Chicago to attend school, I caught in the "Recruitment bug". I learned quickly that recruiting and producing went hand in hand with each other.
After graduating from Columbia College Chicago, I attempted to find industry work in Chicago, but quickly realized that with union regulations that it would be better to work on my own endeavors. I started freelancing on projects before graduating and continue to do this in my free time. In the meanwhile, I stuck with recruiting as much as I could despite economic issues continuing in the country.
How would you describe your professional self?
I am a detail oriented employee that can work both independently and within a group. I like to organize workflows and figure out solutions to problems. When I get my feet wet at a new position, I like to look for improvements that would help the company and/or employees be more efficient.
What is your greatest weakness?
I am a perfectionist that can get lost in details. I have learned this can be an issue but always make my deadlines on time, if not earlier than expected.
Tell me about a challenge you have overcome.
I come from a family of military and first responders, and from an early age, I have had the mentality of proper planning prevents poor performance. The biggest challenge, which also taught me the most actually happened during my final semesters at Columbia College.
A month before school resumed, I had my principal crew in place and script. I also had approval from the school along with securing a professor to oversee my capstone project. This is the beginning of August and we were planning on filming the weekend before Halloween. Nothing could go wrong.
The script involved a piano professor and a relationship with a student..think Dead Poet's Society. A majority of the script we were filming at the school but we needed two additional locations: a piano bar and a way to fake out a car accident.
About two weeks out from filming is when everything that could go wrong started happening. My bank account got hacked and the money for the production was tied up with this issue. My director lost his job and his apartment. While dealing with the bank, I solved his problem by having him move in with me. We had to jump through a few hoops in order to film the piano bar, in part because we were filming at O'Hare International Airport. Yet, it was not until two days before we started filming that we finally got approval to film on campus.
Then my production designer, a week before we started filming, ended up in the hospital. My cinematographer and director stepped in to help cover for her. However, my cinematographer warned me he might deployed overseas. I raced to find backups, to no avail.
We get to the first day of filming and our lead actress calls to tell me she would be late. She had just had her hair dyed the night before and when she washed it, it became purple! We adjusted on the fly, and by the time she arrived I realized that she was also loosing her voice. She was a trooper and pushed through while I rearranged the schedule again to give her the next day off to rest. When filming our car accident sequence, we were interrupted by Chicago Police multiple times from my overly concerned neighbors-despite leaving notices for everyone in a two bock radius and having permits! Then the next morning, while unpacking our equipment at O'Hare International Airport, nursing our actress, dealing with security amongst everything else my boom operator tells me a $3000 piece of equipment was missing (we later pieced together it was stolen from set the night before and we were able to recover it within the week).
There was even more problems after production: technical issues and the fact I could not run around working on these problems due to a severe knee injury. The entire production taught me :
- that anything can be accomplished if you have the right people in place that you believe in
- that no matter how much planning you do (even making back up plans to back up plans) you have to adjust quickly.
- Take one problem at a time, and things will be fixed.