Jazlynn Warren

The best career advice I've ever received is to invest in myself. For me, that looked like starting grad school at the age of 22, which was only a few months after I graduated undergrad. Investing in yourself is the biggest thing that I could have taken from any mentors that I've spoken to, because it's never a waste. I remember talking to them about the cost of it and not wanting to have to figure out how I was getting paid for, but I would much rather be putting resources into something that's gonna benefit me long-term. That investment in my education and development has been invaluable to my career.

I would tell young women to make sure they're in rooms where they actually feel the smallest. I think that the moment you feel like you're the biggest person in a room, that's actually the indicator for you to get around people that are doing what you're doing in your field better than you, who've been doing it longer than you. I've always been a happy recipient of wisdom from people that are older than me or have just been in the industry longer than me, because they know more. It's my joy to glean from women, men, whoever, that are just more knowledgeable in my field than I am. I think my generation of women should crave being around people that are wiser. They should crave wanting mentors, for sure.

I would say the biggest challenge is probably making sure that content creators or storytellers aren't relying too heavily on AI, and if they're gonna use it, using it as a tool rather than a replacement for creativity. It really is extremely easy to just let AI make things, but there's something tangible about a real person being behind what's made. A real person should be able to connect to it. When we're talking about testing a product, you don't want AI to test it on an AI human - you'd want it tested on a real human. That authentic human connection and creativity is what makes content truly meaningful.