Author: Christa Avampato

The short of it: Writer. Health, education, and art advocate. Theater and film producer. Visual artist. Product geek. Proud alumnae of the University of Pennsylvania (BA) and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia (MBA). Inspired by ancient wisdom & modern tech. Proliferator of goodness. Opener of doors. Friend to animals. Fan of creative work in all its wondrous forms. I use my business skills to create passion projects that build a better world. I’ve been called the happiest New Yorker, and I try hard to live up to that title every day. The long of it: My career has stretched across Capitol Hill, Broadway theatre, education, nonprofit fundraising, health and wellness, and Fortune 500 companies in retail, media, entertainment, technology, and financial services. I’ve been a product developer and product manager, theater manager, strategic consultant, marketer, voice over artist, , teacher, and fundraiser. I use my business and storytelling to support and sustain passion projects that build a better world. In every experience, I’ve used my sense of and respect for elegant design to develop meaningful products, services, programs, and events. While building a business career, I also built a strong portfolio as a journalist, novelist, freelance writer, interviewer, presenter, and public speaker. My writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, PBS.org, Boston.com, Royal Media Partners publications, and The Motley Fool on a wide range of topics including business, technology, science, health, education, culture, and lifestyle. I have also been an invited speaker at SXSW, Teach for America, Avon headquarters, Games for Change, NYU, Columbia University, Hunter College, and the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. The first book in my young adult book series, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters, was acquired by a publisher and launched in November 2017. I’m currently working on the second book in the series. A recovering multi-tasker, I’m equally at home in front of my Mac, on my yoga mat, walking my rescue dog, Phineas, traveling with a purpose, or practicing the high-art of people watching. I also cut up small bits of paper and put them back together as a collage artist. My company: I’m bringing together all of my business and creative career paths as the Founder of Double or Nothing Media: • I craft products, programs, and projects that make a difference; • I build the business plans that make what I craft financially sustainable; • I tell the stories that matter about the people, places, and products that inspire me. Follow my adventures on Twitter at https://twitter.com/christanyc and Instagram at https://instagram.com/christarosenyc.
apple, creativity, design, Mac, retail, technology

Meet Mac

Christa Avampato

My new love – my Mac. After months of trying to justify the cost of a new laptop, even though my current laptop works just fine (most of the time), I took the plunge. I’d done my research, I’d attended some workshops, and finally made an evening appointment with the Mac concierge service. They were waiting for me when I arrived and I was out of there in 15 minutes with my new Mac in hand, plus a free printer / scanner / fax/ personal assistant to make me breakfast in bed. 

Their reputation for excellent service is well-deserved. Paul, my Apple guy, was friendly, funny, and best of all, honest. I happily wrote him a note and one for his boss on his behalf as soon as I arrived home. It was the best retail experience I’ve ever had – and I am a very tough sell when it comes to service. In just minutes I was up and running. 
It is amazing what I can now do with photos, my music, personal websites. Even powerpoint presentations are a joy to build. This is the ultimate toy. And it’s so intuitive that I find myself having to unlearn all of the work-arounds I’ve had to learn over the years to operate a PC. I almost have to be re-trained to think naturally about how a machine operates.  
My Mac is also affording me the opportunity to learn design skills and expand my creativity to movie making and original music. I could go on and on, but I really need to get back to Mac. He’s got a lot to teach me. 
career, choices, job

They’re all choices

Christa Avampato

“I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don’t want to buy things they don’t need to impress people they dislike.” ~ Emile Henry Gavreau


It’s review time at the office in many companies. The sales have been tallied for the fiscal year, the plans for the coming year have been set. Now the moment of truth – did all your hard work pay off? And what is it you’d like to do in the coming year? My boss and I began to informally talk about my review. I’ve been at my job for just over 7 months, just enough “to be dangerous” as my boss likes to say. 

The beginning of our discussion about my review led us to a deeper conversation about the choices that the review process necessitates – not in terms of bonuses or promotions, but in terms of the choices individuals need to make about their lives going forward. Too often people see their hands as tied by an employer. “My job requires me to work X number of (very long) hours.” “I have to do X or Y even if I don’t agree with it because my boss says I have to.” My boss and I came to the conclusion that in fact no one has to do anything. Sure, there will be consequences for any action, good or bad, but ultimately the choice of what to do with one’s career and in one’s job is that person’s decision. You are the only one who has to live with you. As my favorite Native American poem asks, “in the empty moments, do you like the company you keep?”

Too often we do things to keep up, show off, puff out our chests, and strut around with a badge of honor for some great sacrifice we’ve made on our employer’s behalf. And sadly, too often that sacrifice is our health or our loved ones or worst of all, our happiness. The truth of the matter is that whether or not we work for that employer, we have to be genuinely proud of who we are and the choices we make at every moment. Companies fall away, people move on, the ink on contracts fades. And no matter who signs my paycheck, the only person I see in the mirror every morning is me. Defining ourselves on our own terms, on our own turf, is the most important work we will ever do because who we choose to become travels with us wherever we go.
career, friendship

Where are who we’ve been

Christa Avampato

“One faces the future with one’s past.” ~ Pearl S. Buck

I visited my first toy fair today. My boss and I walked the show after a morning meeting downtown with a design shop that has a property that we are hoping to carry in our stores. My boss made the connection at the design shop, and with a number of people at the toy fair, through friendships that have spanned decades.
One of the joys of getting older is appreciating the circle of life. People come into our lives, and sometimes drift out, and again drift back to us. We find ourselves in familiar situations. Paths cross and criss-cross. And that reacquainting gives me a lot of comfort.
I’m learning quickly that few people ever leave our lives completely and always. It’s incredible how many people keep showing up in the most unexpected places, especially when we need them most. And in the process of meeting these people again, we re-discover parts of ourselves that reside with the experiences we had with those people. In a sense, they complete us.
child, children, kids, Kidscreen Summit, Spanish, television

V-Me

Christa Avampato

There are 5.5 million pre-school children in the U.S. who are Hispanic. Their parents are interested in preserving their culture and raising their children to speak Spanish. V-Me is a new network that has launched to serve this population, as well as those parents who are interested in having their children learn Spanish. 6 hours / day, 6 days / week, V-Me provides Spanish-language programming for pre-schoolers.

As interesting as the content of V-Me is their business model – it is the first hybrid in television to be a public TV partner and have private investors. While many public companies strive to create content with a good return that is good for the public, many are willing to tell you that when push comes to shove, the money doesn’t play second fiddle to content. Production, after all, is very expensive. V-Me has the challenge of putting financial return on a level playing field with content.

A recent partnership of interest is with iTunes. V-Me content will be the first iTunes partner to have children’s content in Spanish. 

child, children, kids, Kidscreen Summit

Thinking like a kid

Christa Avampato

“Be proud of yourself because sometimes you’re all you’ve got.” ~ Dennis the Menace

At the Kidscreen Summit, I have heard over and over again about the importance of being able to think like a child and being proud of having an imagination that never grows up. Easier said than done. Our past disappointments and successes sometimes turn us into cynics. We grow jaded with the years, as if we are operating in a world is that is static. In an effort maximize our own comfort, we assume that we’ve seen it all, done it all, or know someone who has. Nothing can ever be new.

With this mindset it is tough to imagine being a child. We’ve lost touch with that sense of wonder and curiosity that children exhibit and experience every day. They look at the entire world with new eyes, and in the process they see things, experience things, and imagine things that we may be unable to imagine due to that huge chip on our shoulder.

The fun thing about the Kidscreen Summit is that being child-like is celebrated. It’s actually crucial to their business. They can’t afford to be jaded, financially or in spirit. Their jaded attitude would come at far too high a cost. They’d miss their greatest opportunities. 

Africa, books, child, children, technology

Child soldiers

Christa Avampato

I just finished the book A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. Ishmael was a child soldier in Sierra Leone. Through his own bravery and with the help of the U.N., he was able to escape to the U.S. to begin a new life and start down his road to recovery. I finished the book in a couple of days – Ishmael’s honest and plain-speaking memoir make the book impossible to put down.

NBC Nightly News is also covering the issue of child soldiers this week with Ann Curry based in Congo. It is a frightening tale – these children are facing such devastating circumstances, hopped up on drugs and armed with some of the deadliest weapons on Earth. One boy said he has no way of knowing how many people he killed before he as rescued by the same U.N. program that saved Ishmael. 
I am very interested in volunteering time to help with programs like this one. I have left a message for Ann Curry on her blog and if I hear back from her on ways that Americans can help these children, I will post the information here. In the meantime, visit the NBC site covering Ann Curry’s trip: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23164955/
  
child, children, Disney, Kidscreen Summit, retail

Retail running to catch up

Christa Avampato

I am quite proud to say that I believe I am the sole retail representative at the Kidsummit today. One of the moderators in a meeting today said to me, “that’s great that you are here. You people don’t usually come to our events.” And she’s right. Retail in general is an industry that lags behind in almost every way. If you want to feel like an enlightened, terrifically-smart individual, go work for a retailer and keep your ear to the ground for news from other industries.

Why is this? Personal consumer consumption, and in turn retail, makes up the vast majority of our GDP. So why are we behind the times? As a whole, shouldn’t we believing the charge toward newness. In short, yes, we should. Though in reality, no, we don’t. And that must change. It’s no wonder that so much shopping is flocking to .com and independent retailers, and away from chains. The creators of truly innovative and new properties are fed up with the brick and mortar mentality. I don’t blame them – at times, I am fed up, too. Brick and mortar, as physical objects, can’t flex, can’t adapt to change. Their rigidity, sadly, translates to the mindsets of many, though not all, people who make their careers in retail. Unfortunate, yes. Inevitable, no.

In an effort to disclose my motivation in writing this post, without violating my company blogging policy (a violation of which could have me immediately fired), I think I am safe to say that I work for a retailer that is attempting to stage a turn-around. Welcome to the club, right? We only need to look to the front page of any major newspaper last week to learn that retailers are laying off managers in droves. The health of retail companies is directly and strongly correlated to the health of the economy. If the U.S. housing market leads the charge toward the dreaded “R” word, then retail companies will find themselves in a pinch in no time. Once Target starts reporting negative comps, you can be sure the rest will soon follow.

So how can I, a retail manager, possibly be optimistic about the immediate future of the industry? For one, I studied economics. The idea of cycles cannot be better illustrated that in the history of economies. They go up, they go down, and then back up again.

Two, while yes I do work in retail, I work in a department called Trend and Innovation. Some people think we don’t do anything of value because we do no blocking and tackling. I would go to the mat with anyone who takes that view – I would argue that to not innovate, to not pay attention to trend is to commit economic suicide. “Reinvent, or die.” Do I wish we took projects from concept to execution? Sure – my entire career has embraced the whole process, and I love that. I miss it. For all the sexiness surrounding jobs in “strategy” and “big ideas”, strategy is rendered useless in the absence of flawless execution.

Lastly, I draw some of my optimism from bars and pubs. At the first sign of recession, even in the midst of the Great Depression, bars prosper because of their ability to comfort people and provide a sense of community in times of sadness and distress. Retailers, particularly family-friendly ones, have the rare opportunity to also be places of community, inspiration. They can help people rediscover wonder and imagination, if they are willing to invest in imagination themselves. Disney flourished in the 1930’s, amidst very difficult economic times. That decade saw the birth of Pluto, Goofy, DOnald Duck, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Mr. Disney was a genius, not because of his education or professional background, but because of his ability to embrace the very best attributes of a child – the ability to “get through” by using his imagination.

child, children, entertainment, Kidscreen Summit, media, New York, Sesame Street, technology

"D" is for Digital

Christa Avampato

“This instrument [TV] can teach, it can illuminate, yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends,” he said. “Otherwise, it is merely wires and lights in a box.” ~ Edward R. Murrow

Some marvelous learnings from the Kidscreen Summit. I just finished a morning session entitled “D is for Digital”, put together by the fine folks at Sesame Street Workshop. The panel featured representation from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, Sesame Street Workshop, Commonsense Media (a parent advocacy group centered around media), PBS Kids, and Media Kidz (a research organization).

Some cool and interesting properties that are worth viewing:
Panwapa.com – an on-line community for kids tat features characters who live on an island that floats around. Kids can navigate between five different languages on the fly, can create an avatar in a number of global settings, and encourages acceptance and exploration of different cultures around the world. One of those things that will make you say “I wish I had that when I was a kid.”

Okami – a Japanese video game property that interests boys and girls of a variety of ages.
Word Girl – my boss and I read about this property during the mid-summer when the New York Times ran an article on it. Word Girl is one of the newer properties for PBS, and on the web platform, kids can submit their favorite words as well as play a variety of games to build vocabulary.
Sesame Street Video Player – currently in Beta at videos.sesameworkshop.org – parents and kids can find Sesame Street video clips tagged with character names, text, and, best of all, education concepts such as “sharing” or “friendship”.

And some facts:
The average age of on-set for digital media use is 6.5 years old, down from 8 years of age just two years ago.
96% of tweens and teens use some sort of social networking
71% of parents have had some on-line issues arising with their children
81% of parents say that the internet has helped their child’s learning
The difficulty of “rating up” – a Bain sudy has found increasingly that what used to be considered PG-13 or even R-rated material, now largely is rated as PG or even G content.
Kids are their own programmers – they choose when, where, and what to watch
Kids spend 45 hours per week interacting with media, 30 hours per week in school, and 17 hours per week with their parents.

Trends:
Proliferation of virtual worlds
Casual gaming
Video content and user-generated content on the web
On-line curriculum building separate from educators – PBS is exploring ways to build series of games to lead kids, particularly pre-schoolers, along a path in skills such as literacy by batching and sequencing the games.

The big opportunities:
Focus on literacy
Creative problem sovling
Other skills that kids will need a global economy
Few video games of educational promise really exist today. This is an area of tremendous opportunity for developers and producers of video games.
The bridge between research, industry, and the nonprofit world – the most exciting possibility for me since I have experience and passion in all three areas.
The use of media devices such as cell phones to distribute batches of content in snippets – playing into the trend of our “snack culture”. PBS has done some work around literacy for pre-schoolers in which everyday their parents received a text message from Elmo encouraging them to look for things like foods in the grocery store that begin with the “letter of the day.” After the study, kids who participated were fond to know their alphabet song better and have an increased awareness of the learning opportunities that are all around them.

In conclusion, Sholly Fisch of Media Kidz, made an excellent point that is the underlying driver for the expanded research currently being done on kids and media: kids today are faced with constant change and the increasing need for comfort with ambiguity, though kids are still kids. They still need to be encouraged, loved and cared for. The challenge and opportunity for all of us in the youth space lies in how can we use media as a tool to deliver a rich p-to-date experience to kids that nurtures them in this world of uncertainty and change.

career, dreams, family

Dragon, Fish, and Chameleon in the Middle

Christa Avampato

Recently, I read a magazine advertisement by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Please put aside that this is a boring big 4 (or is it 5 or 6) accounting firm. The ad features a woman (in accounting?), Gail Vennitti, a principal at the company, explaining how her placement in the family line up – middle child – make her well-suited for her job. This is exciting to me. I am also a middle child, and most of the time the connotation of being in the middle is not good. To complicate matters, I was boring in the year of the Dragon, under the zodiac sign of Pisces, and on the Day of the Aerialist. I am by all accounts a dreamy-eyed wandered. Yikes! Who the heck am I???

Gail takes a unique spin on her middle child attribute. As middle children, Gail and I have at one time or another had to be all things to all people. We have to negotiate in a variety of situations – sometimes were the older child, and sometimes we’re the younger child. We are forced to be empathic; to operate in an ever changing world. We fight to be individuals, though recognize the value of being part of a group. In short, we grow comfortable with ambiguity at an alarming rate. Like chameleons we change ourselves to suit our situation, never once being disingenuous. We change when change is needed.

To complicate matters, my Piscean sign and Chinese year make me equally interested in art and science, with an intense imagination and a fierce sense of love and loyalty to causes and people I care about. I have passionate opinions, and love beautiful things. I have a somewhat split personality – there never seems to be an end in what interests me. I can fit in with a batch of surgeons, and in the same breathe address a crowd of cartoonists.

I used to be embarrassed by all of this. I wondered why I could never seem to have one defining interest, and people nearly always seemed confused by my dual-nature. As I get older, like Gail, I am beginning to see my duality as a bonus. It’s the ability to live in the world of the imagination with my feet firmly on the ground that I hope will ultimately lead toward a fulfilling and rewarding life with tangible results that at one time could only be dreamed of.

career, child, children, kids, Kidscreen Summit, retail, work

Kidscreen Summit Prep

Christa Avampato

I’m at home getting ready for the Kidscreen Summit, which begins tomorrow. Over 1330 companies in the field of youth entertainment will be represented and we will noodle through a number of issues to learn about new products, services, and ways of doing business. New technologies and entrepreneurs looking for a break will abound. I know I should be excited. Truthfully, I am terrified.

My fear stems from several things: 1.) my company has paid a fairly large amount of money to attend, and I am its sole representative at the Summit despite the fact that I’ve only been there for 7 months; 2.) as a result of #1, I feel a tremendous pressure to find something cool to bring back to validate the expense. This is not good – it’s kind of like working very hard only to get promoted or to make money. Wrong motivation = missed learnings and poor decisions; 3.) I’ve been in this field 7 months – seriously, what will I have to contribute in a conversation with people who have dedicated their entire lives to youth entertainment?

I hate fear; and I hate the feeling of stress it imbibes. I have to calm myself down. So let’s take these fears one at a time. 1.) though the money that was paid seems large to me, it’s within our budget, and for three days of learning that could give the company a competitive advantage, it’s a drop in the bucket. Check. 2.) There is cool stuff to be had – one only need to look at the agenda and list of exhibitors. I’ve have to be on another planet to miss all the cool stuff that will be available. 3.) I had this same fear when I started business school. In a finance class, what could I contribute coming from a nonprofit and theatre background in a room full of investment bankers. As it turns out, a lot. The beauty of tremendously complex fields, it turns out that no one has all the answers, regardless of how long they’ve worked in a field. Times change, and industries change with those times.

Okay, I feel a bit better. But what is really going to get me over my fear of this Summit – two things. First, I am pretty darn lucky to have a boss who believes in me enough to send me as a representative to this conference. Second, if wifi and an electric outlet are accessible, I’ll be live blogging from the Summit. It’s amazing how many fears can be dissipated if they can be formulated into a story. Check back tomorrow for the latest update….