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.
design, environment, green, New York

Biomimicry – creative inspiration for designers

Christa Avampato

If we, a designers, truly inspect and respect what nature has to teach us, then the creative inspiration around us is limitless. Business Week’s Green Design blog has recently published an enormous amount of new information, largely through pictures, to its site. No doubt that the contents are getting increased attention due to the U.N. General Assembly discussions this week around climate change.

The most fasincating posts to me are those relating to biomimicry, a new discipline that studies intently studies nature and then mimics nature’s designs and processes to solve human problems. How much time do we spend trying to reinvent the wheel, and then in the process chase our own tails? We need look no further than out our own windows to be inspired by new and innovative thinking.

Finally, these sets of articles and the principles of biomimicry have provided me with the vocabularly to articulate why the environment is such a precious resource and why I am so passionate about its protection. To lose any part of it, be in flora or fauna, is to lose hundreds of thousands of years of design study. The wisdom encapsulated in a snail shell or the leaf pattern of a maple is irreplaceable. To lose that wisdom, in my eyes, is an awful as book burning or the banishing of the freedom of expression. As Mayor Bloomberg intimated this week, to not protect the environment is tantamount to terrorism.

Have a look at the Green Design site at http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/di_special/20080211sustainable.htm

corporation, creativity, research

6 myths harmful to the creative movement

Christa Avampato

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” –Erich Fromm

Though this article is a few years old, the principles of the study it describes still hold weight, and sadly the myths are all too prevalent – particularly at companies where old thinking reigns. Teresa Amabile, the author of a new study on creativity in the workplace, heads the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School and is one of the country’s foremost explorers of business innovation.

In summary, she busts the following myths when discussing corporate creativity:
1. Creativity Comes From Creative Types
2. Money Is a Creativity Motivator
3. Time Pressure Fuels Creativity
4. Fear Forces Breakthroughs
5. Competition Beats Collaboration
6. A Streamlined Organization Is a Creative Organization

Read the full article from Fast Company at http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/89/creativity.html

FAO, New York, retail

Spicing up FAO Schwarz

Christa Avampato

I’ve had some experience with celebrities from my time working in theatre. Now that I’m currently not directly connected to the enertainment industry, that experience has diminshed somewhat. I’m always curious about how celebrities deal with not being able to do normal things like grocery shopping.

After my shock at how busy the Apple store on 5th Avenue was today, I toddled over to FAO. I was greeted by a Peter Rabbit taller than I am and a toy soldier. Just as I was about to enter the store, a stretch SUV pulled up and a mass of photographers were pushed to one side. I stood in between the Peter Rabbit and the toy soldier – they had no idea who was in the car either. Enter, Posh Spice, a.k.a. Victoria Beckham, and her pint-size, adorable son.

I snapped a photo of her, amidst dozens of other flashes going off and following her into the building, or at least attempting to. The good folks at FAO wouldn’t let the paparazzi in the store so they hung around at the door, and would wait for her to exit with whatever goodies they picked up inside. Mrs. Beckham wasn’t smiling, and neither was her son. I am sure that celebrity has its perks, though I imagine it reaches a point of diminishing returns. If a trip to FAO can’t put a smile on someone’s face, then what can? And is celebrity really worth that?

environment, green

The Everyday Environmentalist

Christa Avampato

I have been a supporter of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the Sierra Club and at one time worked for Conservation International (CI) because I am passionate about the planet and helping to protect it. TNC has launched a site called “Everyday Environmentalist” in an effort to create a central platform for people to share their green tips on-line. The tips range from the practical like taking the stairs rather than an elevator to the creative such as 101 uses for a bike trailer.

Have a look at what’s posted, and then post your own eco-tips at http://www.nature.org/activities/everydayenv.html

imagination, vision

We Need More Than Eyes to See

Christa Avampato

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” –Helen Keller

Today my boss was telling me about someone he knows who is so color blind that the man’s wife needs to help him get dressed in the monring. His world is one of varying shades of gray, and nothing else. And I wonder that must be like to never live in color, to never even be able to understand it. I feel the same way about a lack of imagination, or an inability to see possibility alongside reality. There is something so spectacular completely missing from that picure, too. A lack of imagination is just another form of gray.

The amount of opportunity that exists in this world is staggering – the possibilities to shape our lives, our business, our physical environment, our relationships are endless. The sheer number of options is so great that it seems impossible that we would ever feel boundaries. And yet, boundaries are inescapable. We live in boxes: those we put ourselves in, those we put others in, those others put us in, and those other people put themselves in. We make our world small rather than opening it up. We concede to the level road of gray rather than making the climb in color.

Our vision and imagination are assets, and to not make full use of them is to waste the resources we are God-given. In a time when we have so much latitude to invent an original life, we owe it ourselves to live the greatest life we can envision.

The above photo can be found at http://inexorablyloved.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/sunny-eyes-012b.jpg

New York, New Yorker, story

A Cartoon a Day to Chase the Blues Away

Christa Avampato

February can bring out the blues in all of us. Yesterday I went hoem a bit early with a massive headache – the perfect storm of gloomy weather, flourescent lights, and 8 hours toiling away in front of a computer screen. I’m lucky that an enormous part of my job requires me to read close to 100 news sources every day – from newspapers to blogs to magazine to trade journals, and many of them contain creative content.

One of my favorite daily checks is the blog created by New Yorker cartoonists. I wish I could draw well, or rather, I wish it didn’t take me so long to draw well. I long to be one of those people who easily takes ink to paper to draft up a piece of witty genius in a matter of minutes. Everyone’s got to have a goal to reach for, right?

Even though it’s so foggy out right now that I can’t even see the lake that’s only a few hundred feet from me, I’m smiling because of the cartoonists over at The New Yorker. This month, the New Yorker Cartoonist blog is features Michael Maslin. I love the honesty and simplicity of his cartoons and the stories they present. Check him out at http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonists

art, child, children, illustration, illustrator

Charley Harper: Illustrator

Christa Avampato

This weekend on CBS Sunday Morning, I saw a clip about the illustrator Charley Harper and fell in love with his work. He creates animals and natural settings from a variety of every day geometric shapes. To watch him work was to see a technical artist at play.

Todd Oldham, an LA-based designer, re-doscovered Harper’s work by a sheer act of serendipity, and spent years archiving Harper’s illustrations as well as getting to know him personally. Oldham has compiled his findings in a new book published by AMMO. A quick flip through the pages, and you’re bound to find a picture that takes your imagination to the next level. Even better, Charley Harper’s work will help you see nature with a new found respect for its magnificent sense of design and order.

You can take a peak at the book through AMMO’s site: http://www.ammobooks.com/new/books/9780978607654/

The picture above can be found at http://www.contemporaryartscenter.org/uploaded/downloads/charley_harper_desktop.jpg

economy, politics, writing

A Topic for Controversy

Christa Avampato

When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
~ William Hazlitt, English essayist and literary critic

Another milestone for this blog- my 200th post in less than 9 months. Not too bad. Constantly writing leads me to constantly think about topics of interest, and as a result of topics of controversy. At work, we always seem to be shoulder-deep in the later. And while it’s all well-intentioned, it can on occassion be tiresome. However, the controversy is necessary if we are to move forward.

I freely admit that I have a distinct reluctance to engage in controversy. Not that I have a problem with carving my own path, considering and re-considering emotional and complicated issues, or speaking my mind. On the contrary, I excel at all three of those things. What I have a tough time with is belaboring number after number with no consideration of the information contained within those numbers. I have little tolerance for the constant rehashing of the same material over and over again. I can’t stand constant controversy over a single topic. I am a firm believer in the “get on board this ship or find a new one” when it comes to the strategic direction of a company. And some times I get on board, and some times I bail. But I never get on board if I don’t fully believe that the ship is being steered by an able navigator. Once the controversy is settled, the real work of moving down the chosen path begins. A company can’t move forward while the seas of controversy rage.

This time of year there is plenty of controversy to go around – what to do about the economy, the next Presidential administration, our own foreign relations, the war in Iraq, our environment, and the list goes on. No matter what side of the fence we fall on with these issues, the interest and passion has yet to wane. And for that, I’m grateful. We don’t have the best answers yet. We have huge problems in this world, and we need the controversy and its companion, interest, to unearth the the best solutions. However, at some point soon, on many if not all of these topics, we will have to make a choice. As one co-worker said to me recently as we left a particularly heated meeting “it’s amazing how quickly something gets done when it absolutely has to get done.” At that point, the topic of controversy has to shift to resolution, as does the interest of those involved.

charity, community service, creativity, volunteer

HelpOthers.org

Christa Avampato

People need a mission – something to keep them going when the going gets tough. For some it’s work, for others it’s family and friends. Could be a hobby or volunteer work. The folks at HelpOthers.org take pride in making a stranger’s day a little bit easier and then asking those strangers to pay the favor forward to others.

A few months ago I signed up for their weekly email, Smile Newsletter, that records the antics of good samaritans across the globe. A story from this week’s newsletter, below, made me laugh and reminded me that even when it comes to doing good deeds, it’s helpful to be flexible. Enjoy!

“I went into a laundrymat today to leave money for someone to find to do their wash, so I had my coins and tape and was looking around for a spot to leave them when this distraught lady said, ‘Oh you have tape! I really need some my top is cracked and won’t stay on and I didn’t know what I was going to do!’ I’m not sure what was exactly wrong but I was happy to give her some tape and a smile. When I was walking away I heard her say, ‘Thank you, God!’ I went in for one reason but clearly there was another purpose in my being there, even if it was so simple as sharing a piece of tape. It definitely put a smile in my heart!” –RaeofSunshine

books, child, children, lists, litertaure

100 books every child should read

Christa Avampato

I’ve blogged before about my infatuation with lists of all kinds. Today on omnivoracious.com, there is a post entitled “100 books every child should read, UK-style.” The focus is on fun and adventurous reads as opposed to telling kids things they “ought to know.” Finally!

The list is divided up into early, middle, and early teen years. I had a blast flipping through the list, remembering how much I loved some of these books. And I was also pleasantly surprised to see some I’d never even heard of! Most of them have a decidedly creative bent, allowing children’s imaginations to wander over into the realm of the impossible, which is the only way toward real progress.

The list was compiled by the Telegraph, and can be accessed at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;jsessionid=XESKHTCWTJIMNQFIQMFSFGGAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/arts/2008/01/19/bokidsbooks119.xml