What is your title?
Account Executive
How long have you been with VLS?
3 Years (+ 13 years previously at Production Advantage)
What Office Do You Work Out Of?
Vermont (Home office)
What is your hometown?
Newport News, Virgina
What do you like most about the lighting industry?
The blending of the creative with the technical. It provides the opportunity to use both sides of the brain. I’ve always seen my role as being a translator, taking a designer’s vision and incorporating the technical skills and product knowledge to make it a reality.
Who inspires you?
Artists who work to bring their art, performance or otherwise, outside of the gallery or theater to make it accessible to more people.
Peter Schuman of Bread & Puppet, or Meow Wolf are good examples.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to enter the lighting industry?
Take every opportunity to work in the industry – without selling yourself short. As you gain skills those skills have real value and deserve real compensation.
Go to every trade show you can, learn about the tools (ie products) available to you, and keep up with the technology as it changes.
If you want to be a designer, get your hands dirty and learn to be a technician too. You’ll learn better how to use the tools (ie lighting and controls) when designing.
If you want to be a technician, find opportunities to design too. You’ll learn why designers design they way they do.
In both instances you’ll learn to communicate better with those you collaborate with.
What’s something about you (a fun fact) that not many people know?
I can walk on stilts
What’s the last book you read?
Probably some technical manual
What is your favorite hobby?
Traveling to new places
What’s the first concert you ever attended?
Amahl and the Night Visitors (Opera)
Sting (Rock n Roll)
What’s the next place on your travel bucket list?
American Southwest
If you had to eat one meal every day for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Steak (really good steak) (didn’t say it had to be the healthiest meal)
What’s one item you can’t live without?
Coffee
