Three of the principles of leadership according to Amazon that I believe I enact in my own professional life contain having a backbone, disagreeing and commitment, Curiosity and eagerness to learn, and inventiveness and ability to simplify.
Since the pandemic, I’ve worked in restaurants as a host and server working late hours in downtown Seattle for the last couple years. I’ve regularly advocated for the safety of hourly employees, and advocated for better safety measures with some results. At my current job in a restaurant inside a hotel, after an incident with an intoxicated stranger, I advocated for front desk hourly employees to have security’s phone number posted on the desk. Despite some initial pushback from management, we had it the next day, as well as the agreement that we can use it as we see fit.
This past spring, I was a PA on a special episode of Deadliest Catch shot in a warehouse in Seattle. I had the opportunity of working with the Art Dept. to create concrete-looking panels made of canvas in the first day on set. Then myself and two other PA’s designed the set to look like an “Abandoned Fisherman’s Shack” as ordered by the LA producers over FaceTime on someone’s iPad.
I think on film sets is where my curiosity and eagerness to learn really shine. Later, I made friends with the DP, and he introduced me to Shot Designer, and he had me create our lighting set on his device after we built it, which gave me the opportunity to get to know the lighting setup and diffusions we used. Below is a photo of the design in the Shot Design app, and an example of the results.
It was through this experience I got to exercise my inventiveness from everything from crafty set-up to lighting design, and I really loved the opportunity to be mentored closely by a kind DP. Really a dream come true.