Her Story
About Anja
I've been working in digital entertainment for about 10 years, focusing on the preteen to young adult demographic. I started in digital entertainment and have worked across various platforms in this newer age of entertainment. Most recently, I work for Pocket FM, where I write shows and get to make my own hours as long as I meet my deadlines. Every day is really just writing, which is what I love. I'm an expert writer in the digital space, and since I came up in digital rather than traditional media, it's natural and easy for me to keep up with the quick pace of writing that digital requires. One of my most notable achievements was working on Game Changers for Nickelodeon last year, which was very exciting since I grew up watching Nickelodeon. I'm probably most known for writing Malibu Surf, a very popular YouTube show that has been done for 6 years but is still so popular that we recently did an interview for Pepperdine University about it. I went to school for broadcasting and film in Toronto, Canada, where I'm from, and then did an extension certificate program at UCLA, which was such a great program where I learned so much. I believe that going to school is very important, but experience and learning to adapt is something you can only really learn in the field when you're working with real money and real stakes. Every show and every job teaches you something new.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Anja
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think I'm very driven. My friends always say that about me, like I'll never give up on something. I also think not being afraid to network or ask people to read a script and things like that has really helped me. I'm not afraid to reach out and make connections, which has been really important in my career.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
When I was at UCLA, one of our teachers told us that pretty much anybody will respond to a cold email if you just ask them to learn about them. I have discovered that that is true, and you can get a lot of really good meetings from it. That was probably some very good advice because I've done a lot of really, really great networking just from cold emails. And networking is very, very, very important to our industry.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Definitely internships are the easiest way to break in. Also, the importance of your peers cannot be overstated, because those are gonna be your co-workers someday. That's your network, so staying connected with people you went to school with and people you interned with is really important. A lot of internships can turn into jobs, but also, people that you meet at your internships can be the ones recommending you for jobs. So that is definitely the easiest way - just apply to a million internships while you're still in school or still starting out. That is the easiest way to break in. I also think it's very important for writers to take feedback and really try to learn and understand it, because that's how you grow.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think the biggest opportunities right now are the verticals and how there's so many of them. What is really good about verticals and digital media in general is people are a lot more willing to take risks and take chances on people who don't have huge resumes. So that's very good for people starting out. I think the challenges are people kind of just adapting to this new sort of digital age, because marketing is now all online for people's projects and things. It's kind of just adjusting to this new world.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I guess honesty is really important to me. I really try to make very honest stories. Anything that I don't think would speak to me, I just always try to make things relatable in a very real way, not in a 'hopefully this will resonate with our demographic' kind of way. I try to always be like, okay, I'm just gonna put my mindset in the demographic and remember what I was like and what I would want. And that's kind of how I always do everything, which I think has really worked out for me. So yeah, just being honest and grounded.
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