A lot of people ask me how I got into this business. I find that question absurdly hard to answer in just a few words. I mean, when I look back into the history of my career ideas, very few things pointed me in this direction. As a tiny child I was obsessed with the television show "Emergency!". I needed an ambulance STAT and it was my favorite toy for years. As I aged a smidge I decided that mermaid was a pretty cool job so I wanted to be that - a half-fish woman who swam around and...uh...I don't know what mermaids do, really, I just knew that there was a lot of swimmin' and hangin' with whales and that was right up my alley. As I moved into high school it seems I was going to be an actor according to a creative writing paper I recently discovered in the basement. I was going to be best friends with Julia Roberts, live in some sparkling European city, and be married to Harry Connick, Jr. Nice work, if you can get it. In college, when you're supposed to really be solidifying your long held desire to be a (fill in profession here), I was convinced I'd become a marine biologist, which was only slightly more realistic than mermaid because I was enrolled at Saint Louis University, in Missouri, hours away from any substantial bodies of water. So, I settled in and studied theatre.
Hold up. Stop eye rolling. When people hear that they typically reply "oh, studied theatre" in some faux British accent. It's a real thing. It requires real work. You have to memorize stage directions and lines and you have scene work for your classes and you are also in a show that requires rehearsals in the evening and you're taking a full semester of other classes which require you to learn things and write papers. But I digress.
Anyway, you're in college and you're a grown up now and you're supposed to know what to do with your life. All I knew was I was focused on the three most unemployable majors - Fine Arts, English, and Women's Studies - and was determined to not be a poor waitress. (IRT cue 34: audience laugh) I graduated and promptly moved to Chicago where I somehow became a poor waitress who put that Fine Arts degree to good use by never auditioning for anything so, clearly, I wasn't off to a great start. I was supposed to be a half-fish in Paris anyway, for cryin' out loud! Where the hell was Harry Connick!?!
After some years as The Sassy Waitress(TM) at an Irish pub (a role I was born to play), I ended up being hired by a meeting production company to work on their marketing (a role I was NOT born to play). But fortunately, the company and I realized we liked each other enough to stay together, I was shifted to production, started line producing (muuuuuch better), and worked through all the various roles until I was EPing my own shows. So, that's how I got here, doing a job I didn't even know existed and absurdly happy to have found something I truly enjoy.
Now if only Julia Roberts would call me back.