Kayla Winkfield

I've been in my field for about 5 years, and working in animation has always been my dream since I was a kid watching all the 90s Nicktoons, Cartoon Network, and Disney shows. I'm currently an executive assistant in animation on Dora, where I've been for 3 years. In this role, I work under two showrunners and manage their calendars and our production team's calendar in New York. I handle everything from booking travel and doing expense reports to making sure my executive producers have the materials they need before meetings and cleaning up their notes. Before this, I was a production assistant at Nick on Star Trek Prodigy. Prior to breaking into animation, I worked in litigation as a presentation specialist for a company that couples with law firms to help create graphics for them to present in court. Before that, I spent years working at different graphic design companies as a graphic designer, doing project management, e-learning courses, and government proposals. My most notable professional achievement is finally breaking into animation, because it took me so long to do it and that's always what I wanted to do. Coming from Maryland, which is very STEM-focused with lots of engineers and computer scientists, I didn't know anyone that worked in animation, so I'm very proud that I was able to achieve this goal after getting rejected over and over again.