Alumni with creative careers share insights of workaday world

By Adrial Lanka-Lobel '02

An Internet creative developer, a music producer, an entertainment writer, a painter and a magazine editor participated in a panel on campus last week encouraging Cornell students to incorporate their creative skills in a myriad of available career options.

Music producer and toy creator Brad Ross '79, left, and Nancy Mills '64, a Hollywood-based entertainment writer, are part of a panel discussion on careers and creativity March 30 in 103 Rockefeller Hall. Barry DeLibero/University Photography

The panelists convened in the first-ever "Careers for Creative People" talk on campus, sponsored by Cornell Career Services (CCS), Engineering Career Services and Arts and Sciences Career Services, on March 30 in Rockefeller Hall.

Having formed the panel, Irene Komor, career counselor at CCS, said, "There are many Cornell students who have creative talent and energy and do not always know how to express it in the world of work. [Some students] take a major like economics and think to themselves, 'This is it -- I can't be creative anymore.' What we want them to realize is that there are ways that people can make a decent living and continue to be actively creative."

Nancy Mills '64, a Hollywood-based entertainment writer whose celebrity interviews have been published in the New York Daily News and USA Weekend, praised the efforts made by the various career services offices. "The opportunities today for students looking for work or guidance are much broader, and [students] should really take advantage of [these opportunities]. We didn't have it [when I was a student at Cornell], so we had to fend for ourselves."

Elsie Dinsmore Popkin '58, a pastels painter in residence at the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, concurred with Mills. "We never had panels like this when I was at Cornell. In those days, if you had thought about how you were going to earn a living, that was somehow contaminating your art. And, therefore, it would be considered impure. Nobody ever said go to graduate school and no one ever talked about making connections."

A creative career does not come without some struggles, the panelists told their student audience. Michael Tamburro '97 works as a senior creative developer for the Internet company Viant. With the recent downturn in the Internet economy, the belt-tightening actions of many young Internet firms have resulted in fewer clients for Tamburro, who once had the Dreamworks SKG-owned web site pop.com as a client, before it went bust. With the pain of the economic downturn reverberating industrywide, Tamburro occasionally puts aside his creative skills and hones in on his technical expertise to ensure his survival. "I'm lucky as I'm a creative person with a steady job. I've not had to worry about it. More often, it's a gap in creativity that I experience. Whereas my job is more stable than, say, some of the other panelists, there would be stretches of time where I don't get to do as creative work," he said.

Mills faced a different challenge when her husband received a job transfer from New York to London. "I went from having a full-time magazine job in New York, which was my dream, to having no job [in London]. I slowly built up a freelance career [upon arriving]. In England, they don't like pushy American women -- which I guess is what I am. I had a terrible time in getting any work at all. Finally, I convinced the women's editor of The Guardian -- a London newspaper -- to give me a chance to write something from my American perspective. I wrote about my ideas on English men."

Others on the panel stressed promoting visibility and change in their respective communities. Urban Latino features editor Jessica Rodriguez '99 said, "Being Latin is the flavor of the month. To me, it's important to put out positive images and to show our experiences from every side. The fact that I can work at a publication that is geared to my community and to my culture is so important to me. That's where my passion is."

For music producer and toy creator Brad Ross '79, "The greatest triumphs are getting [my ideas] into the marketplace for people to buy or for people to see and hear." Ross composed the Off-Broadway musical Little by Little and has had his toy creations optioned by Hasbro. He demonstrated to the student audience a toy he created that resembles the birdie used during a game of badminton. The toy changes color while in flight.

Ethan Ash, a senior communication student who is interested in photography and writing, said of the panel discussion: "It was interesting to see panelists that would not be at your average Cornell career gathering. They each took a hobby and made it into their full-time jobs."

At the close of the presentation, Popkin emphasized, "If you love what you do and break even, everything else is gravy."