Annie Reardon

I think just a lot of resilience and dedication, and also just, like, people at work kind of call me the sunshine. It's like, no matter what, I'm always positive and bubbly, and maybe that's surface level, maybe behind the scenes I can get stressed a little bit sometimes, but bringing that positivity into every situation that I can is definitely helpful.

When I was interning in New York City at NBC and ABC, I really thought I wanted to go all in on a big company like that, but I was interviewing for my company right now, and it's called Super Awesome, which was a startup at the time. My supervisor at ABC said, well, don't worry about all the different things that could happen, or might happen, but look at where life is pointing you. And she's giving you an offer, like, that's telling you something. Throughout my whole career, I've kind of felt like I've just followed the direction life was pointing me to, because I was on one team, and then they poached me to join another team, and now I've been running that department over the past year. I think that was really good advice to not worry about all the what-ifs, but just look at the direction that life is pointing me towards.

I think just coming in with an open mind, and just knowing that where you start your career, there's still so many different hats you can explore. So, if you start in one sector of the business, that doesn't mean that you're going to be there for the rest of your career. You can always try new things and raise your hand and start new projects that you're interested in and passionate about, because you want to be able to enjoy what you're doing. You're going to be doing your job for the majority of your life, most often. So it's good that you're enjoying it and looking at new areas you can explore and kind of build upon and see what you want to do next and who you want to learn from. I'm actually excited to mentor a young intern this summer who's a young girl.

I think one of the biggest challenges is definitely AI. It's working in media and everything online, it's hard to know what's real, what's not, and when we're working with family creators, kid creators, teen creators, we definitely want authenticity and their own voice, and making sure that we're speaking to young audiences in a brand-safe and good way. We just don't want AI out there ruining any of it. There's definitely good uses with it, too, but it can be a scary place when kids are first getting their first phone and exploring things on the internet. That's definitely a big challenge right now.

Especially after having a stroke, you never know what people are going through. Like, everyone's facing an invisible battle, so it's like, if someone is acting a certain way with you at work, maybe they seem frustrated, like, just trying not to take it personally, because maybe they're going through something, you know. So just trying really hard not to take things personally or take it to heart, but at the same time, using a lot of heart and passion in what I do.