Why did you want to study Film & Television production? When I started thinking about filmmaking, I had already had two distinct careers.  Right after undergrad, I spent several years in Chicago studying and performing comedy improvisation.  When it seemed like that career was taking off, I fell into a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work on a presidential campaign.  Thinking that it would be just a short break, I signed on to be an "advance staffer" for President Obama.  Instead, it turned into an opportunity to work for the White House and travel the world. Even after years working in politics and the non-profit sector planning large scale events, I couldn't shake the creative impulse.  I'm studying Film & Television production because SCA is giving me a place to bring my diverse creative talents together into a career telling stories.  

What have been your greatest successes and challenges at school so far? In my third semester at USC, I pitched a proposal for SCA's first-ever documentary series.  My idea was to find queer people who were old enough to have lived through the AIDS pandemic so that we could find out how surviving crisis and social change echoed in their lives today.  SCA chose my idea for production and I was able to spend my third semester showrunning the series, Still Here Still Queer.  It was a profound learning experience.  Thanks to the incredibly talented classmates I was able to bring on to the production, it was also a huge success.  

My challenges? I'm incredibly grateful that I've had the glorious opportunity to fail over and over again at SCA.  I've made some class exercises that completely flopped - total stinkers!  I've also created some truly mediocre work too.  Learning to deal with the disappointment I feel when my work doesn't meet my expectations is the most fundamental challenge of studying an art like filmmaking.  Meeting this challenges and failing often so that I can learn as much as possible is what film school is all about.  

What projects have you worked on that you’re proud of? The docuseries we created this year really stands out in the work that I've made while at SCA.  Our team was able to connect with incredible participants who shared their lives with courage and generosity.  The crew we brought together stayed at it and worked hard enough to honor those lives.  The documentary faculty at SCA gave us the tools we needed to build incredible episodes of television that we hope will screen at festivals and that we believe stand a chance to get distributed.  

What advice would you give someone who is thinking about applying to SCA? If you get into SCA, they admit you as a filmmaker.  You're not pigeon-holed as a director, editor, cinematographer, production designer, or producer, even if you already know how you ultimately want to specialize.  This is the major distinction between SCA and the other top-tier MFA programs.  In my opinion, SCA's strategy is the superior approach.  I want to be a director, but my experiences editing, producing, and shooting class projects have been critical to understanding how to collaborate with other artists.  Another reason I prefer the SCA way: in the "real world," deciding what we want to do and how we're going to make a place for ourselves in the industry is a process that continues throughout a career.  SCA is a safe and supportive place to practice doing that.