Jessi Aylward

My career path has been anything but typical, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I studied film at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design because I wanted to be like Cameron Diaz in The Holiday, making movie trailers in that giant house. I interned doing just that for a summer, but quickly realized I couldn't watch the same movie over and over again, breaking it down from five times to the same 20 minutes to the same three minutes. When I told my film professor I didn't want to do that anymore, he asked what I wanted to do long-term. I said make independent film. He told me to go into advertising, make some money, and then support films and artists later if I still wanted to. That's still the goal. I earned a Bachelor of Science in entrepreneurship rather than an art degree, studying a lot of business to move myself into advertising. By chance, I fell into digital and social media first, which led me into photo shoots and video shoots for social media, and ultimately to TV commercials. On the experiential side, people would call me asking if I could help them build a robot because I knew the tech lingo, or convert a car into a fake TLC cab for The North Face with Easter eggs on touchscreens. That's how I got into experiential - everything just kind of nicely led into other things, and my experiential and TV commercial work got bigger and bigger over time. I started as an account manager, but one day I raised my hand and said I actually liked making the pretty things and wanted to be a producer. My boss said okay, that makes sense, and changed my title. I've had some not-great experiences along the way that I've hopefully taken with me to become a better boss and not do things I've seen in the past. As of lately, I've been doing a lot of experiential tours - cross-country and multi-country tours for brands. I just got off a nine-city tour for LEGO, Star Wars, and Target where we built a six-room building in the parking lot of Targets all over America, literally across America and back, east to west and back to east and the Midwest. It was a huge feat and I'm still recouping, but it was totally worth it. A couple years ago, I also had the opportunity to launch a new brand called Paze, doing all their strategic planning with the team, all of their social media, and initial TV spots. That was incredible in its own sense and very different from experiential, but amazing to launch such a new and innovative brand. My typical day is not typical at all. What's most important to me is making sure my team is always okay and getting the creative and outputs that they want. I make sure clients are happy, on budget and on time, and I keep the peace between all vendors - whether it's fabrication, print, production houses, directors, my creative team, the account team, and the clients. On the day of an event, it's really about making sure everyone's safe and super happy. Over the past few years, I've worked with some absolutely amazing teams who have helped me grow and let me shine all at the same time, so I just try to give back to my teams.