Career Path Of A Founder And Program Director At Treats

I started working as many producers and entertainment professionals do: as a production assistant. For anyone starting out in entertainment, that's often your first job.

It can be a mixed bag and is definitely a little grueling. I know there's a feeling of paying your dues and that things are just done a certain way. Thankfully, there are now protections for people's time and energy, which is wonderful for the next generation.

Even though I wasn't sure about physical production, I learned every element of it. You get to see what art directors, lighting crews, cinematographers, and camera operators do. You pick up and learn so much from the experience.

From that, I learned I liked driving the ship and being the central point. This means making sure stories happen, writers are happy, executives and the network are happy, and all elements are working together. You can think of it like being the conductor of an orchestra.

I was a producer on many docuseries and fun projects, including pilots, and found my way to comedy. That's really my passion; personality-wise, it was a good match. Through connections, I was lucky to be called again and again.

That's another thing about production: once you're in and prove yourself to be a nice, kind, hard-working person, you tend to get called for the next gig. Up until recently, I hadn't been on an interview in 10 years.

I worked in comedy for a few shows on Comedy Central and on one show on TrueTV. Those were really fun to do, and I met a lot of great people. I exercised my writing skills and directed some things. It's a really fun, creative environment.

After that, I took a break and worked in agency work. It's more structured, and while I hesitate to call it corporate, it has more of a corporate interest because you're pleasing clients. It's just a different structure.

During COVID, we did a few campaigns for the NIH, which was fun and rewarding. A lot of that work shifted towards messaging about COVID and encouraging vaccinations. I interviewed infectious disease specialists about the realities of the disease and how scary things were.

That, combined with the racial reckoning happening and personal reasons, made me need to take a break. I decided to shift gears and felt called to help the community in a different way. After quieting my mind and giving myself a break from feeling burnt out, I came up with an idea.

I wanted to see if we could heal ourselves from burnout and that feeling of being lost. Many friends and family felt they had lost their spark and creativity. I felt that way myself and looked for a collective or group that met to discuss passion projects outside of work.

I wanted a space to play, do fun things, and reconnect in a way that we're not always allowed to, as we feel we just have to keep moving. I couldn't find anything like that. As they say, you create the thing you needed the most, and I realized I had to make it.

So, for the past few months, I've been working on structuring this. I think it's a non-profit right now, but we'll see how it shakes out. It's a collective that empowers participants to heal themselves from burnout within communities.

It's gotten a good response so far and is a case study for a business school class starting this fall, which is exciting. I also applied and got into a business accelerator program with Treat, so I'm getting a lot of help over the next six months. Don't be afraid to take a chance on yourself when things just don't feel quite right anymore.