Michael Vito is a dear friend, Compass Yoga board member, and all-around rock star advisor. When I founded Compass, Michael was one of the first two people I consulted to read my 5-page plan. (The other was Lon Tibbitts, another dear friend, Compass board member, and rock star advisor – I am a lucky girl!) Michael very honestly supported my vision and laid out about 100 things that needed fixing in such a way that I felt even more motivated rather than crushed. His ability to weave a tale is pretty darn extraordinary.
In a way, we took the big Leap into working for ourselves together, several weeks apart after about a year of seriously talking about how on Earth we were both going to do the work we love and get paid for it. I’m very happy to share Michael’s story below, in his own beautiful words. To learn more about him, check out the Third Place Media site and his personal blog, Like a Fish in Water.
Michael Vito’s Leap
About two and a half months ago, I decided to take my list of “stuff I want to do when I have the time and money, someday” and just do it. I left my research and communications position at the Corporate Eco Forum and launched my own business, Third Place Media.
The name is based on the term of art used by urban planners to refer to settings other than home and work that support civic engagement and help build social capital. On top of this concept I’ve layered transit oriented development and walkable neighborhoods, two related forces that work best in tandem to reduce dependence on automobiles. I think the combination of the three creates more diverse, economically vibrant and environmentally sustainable communities that address the needs of a broad group of stakeholders.
I place myself in the role of 21st century storyteller. In order to help drive more of this kind of land use and development, I think there’s a need for rich narrative content to help communities understand what is at stake and what tools are available to create change. Armed with cameras and a keyboard, I plan to get down in the trenches with local governments, planners, economic development organizations, community leaders and businesses, supporting their efforts to build better places. I will be offering both content development and communications strategy consulting to tie things together.
I’ve designated the first six months to be focused on pilot projects, designed to both get a feel for workflows and methodologies I’ll be using, as well as create a portfolio demonstrating the concepts. So far, I’ve spent plenty of time camping out in train stations and exploring of the communities built around them. I produced some prototype Third Place Media content that will be used by the newly formed South Orange economic development organization. I just wrapped up principal photography and will shortly begin the editing phase of a miniature documentary on 热闹 (rènao), the Chinese cultural affinity for noisy, rowdy, lively environments. Next month, my wife, daughter and I will visit our family in China. Both while there and during a short side trip by myself to Tokyo, I plan to photograph, film and document transit infrastructure, mixed-use development, and social phenomena in public spaces. All of these are things I would have done anyway, for no other reason than pure curiosity. Such is the magic of choosing one’s own path.
Looking back on the summer, it’s a little bit unbelievable to me how much ground I’ve covered, both in terms of the actual work and the emotional distance I’ve traveled since making my leap. I would never have anticipated how much and how intensely I could work (and still want to do more) after immersing myself in all of the things that really light me up. I’ve also lost what remained of my tolerance for the kind of uninspiring leadership and poor behavior to which I have been subjected in previous stages of my career. In my own approach to management, it’s my goal to make sure that the people who work with me never have to don the hard shell I needed to preserve myself. Regardless of position and level of experience, everyone deserves no less than complete respect, to do work that inspires their curiosity, and to be empowered to take risks and explore their creative potential. The great challenges of our time are too interesting and too complex to not bring everything we have to bear.
Christa Avampato 