Amanda Zinger

My career journey began almost 20 years ago at a little financial services company where I was a Marketing Communications Associate. Because I had that financial experience and deep financial compliance knowledge, I got incredibly lucky when an agency reached out needing someone junior who wouldn't get in trouble with compliance. I managed to get into an ad agency with no portfolio, just a literature degree, which is basically unheard of. I was just bumbling along through my young life and ended up in an ad agency, and I loved it. I worked my way up as a copywriter for about 10 years and then as a creative director. Around 2016, I started to see the AI writing on the wall when Chase Banks started testing early AI for their web banners, and I thought I needed to get very close to the AI and try to become AI-proof. I wrongly thought conversation design was going to be a safe spot, but that turned out to be false when ChatGPT came along. I also hated UX - I mean, I hated every second of it. Someone from my agency days got me into consulting, so I was in a little consulting creative group as creative director again, working with animators, videographers, and designers for almost 3 years. Then I got laid off, and now I'm doing freelance brand management for a couple of nonprofits. In the middle of all that, I got my Master's degree in Creative Technology from SMU, and it's been one of the greatest decisions I've ever made. After all those years in agencies writing and writing with compliance and lawyers looking over your shoulder, I went and did entirely different things. I'm a year out from graduation, and I haven't had this much creative energy since I was in my 20s. It's been a huge revival - I needed it. The plan now is to go into immersive experiences, which is a very fast-growing industry. From what I'm seeing, there's not a lot of concept there, just a lot of pretty lights, and I think there's a huge spot for someone like me coming out of advertising who is very conceptual and can add meaning to the pretty lights.