Career Path of a Director Business Operations at Fortune 100 Entertainment Company

Taking a look back at my career path, I believe it started in my senior year of undergraduate at Chapman University. I was studying public relations and advertising. In the summer between my junior and senior year, I made the now, what I believe to be brilliant decision, to apply to work at Disneyland.

Chapman University is in Orange County, only a 10-minute drive from Disneyland. I was hired as a Jungle Cruise skipper. Many people say that's the most perfect job for a college student, and I couldn't agree more. It was perfect because it taught me public speaking, how to interact with difficult people, and how to generally have fun while working.

While working at Disneyland, I realized I had access to a brilliant intranet tool where I could search for people who worked for Disney. After some sleuthing and reconciling with LinkedIn, I found a hiring manager who was hiring for an intern at Disney Interactive Media in Glendale, California. I sent an email, got an interview, and that interview turned into an incredible internship.

I was in that internship for only four months before I was miraculously offered a full-time job with Disney. I have to caveat that this doesn't happen very often; I felt very lucky. I think one of the lessons for me was that success, particularly in the entertainment industry, is about more than just knowing people, having the right skills, and experience. It's also a matter of luck.

I was in the right place at the right time when a specific role was opening up during a period when the organization needed to recruit people. I managed to get in at the right time. I stayed at Disney for four and a half years in a few different roles. My official role was a social engagement strategist, responsible for franchise and brand channels, including social media and disney.com for Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, Frozen, and The Lion King.

Essentially, I was responsible for leading the online digital media efforts for any promotions happening around those specific franchises or intellectual properties. This included campaigns like The Lion King's 20th anniversary and the Frozen home entertainment campaign, all managed by my team. I had a few different roles at Disney. I worked in ad sales and pre-sales, where we packaged proactive campaign pitches for advertisers.

I ended my tenure at Disney in a data analytics and insights role. We looked at data to understand what it was telling us, what we should do more of, what we should do less of, and how to communicate that to the organization. After leaving Disney, I went to Warner Brothers and was on the Harry Potter Global Franchise Development team for almost five years.

I started as a digital marketing manager, doing a similar job to what I did at Disney, looking after all the campaigns and digital media channels for Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts. I then moved into a more management strategy role with a joint venture with J.K. Rowling called The Wizarding World Digital. I ended my time there as a director of marketing, managing The Harry Potter 20th anniversary campaign.

I've apparently been doing a lot of 20th anniversary campaigns. About six months ago, I moved into a new role with Warner Brothers Animation, Cartoon Network Studios, and Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe. It's called Director of Business Operations, where I'm looking after the day-to-day operations and strategy of our animation production arm.

This includes decisions on which projects get greenlit, their costs and revenue projections, hiring needs, and equipment purchases. These are all things that fall within my wheelhouse now. It's certainly different from my previous roles on the Harry Potter team or at Disney, but I'm having a wonderful time.