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Rising Stars 2014: Alexis Roizen [Journal of Business (Spokane, WA)](Journal of Business (Spokane, WA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Alexis Roizen Age: 27 Job Title/Company: Creative director, Rainmaker Creative; design executive officer (DEO) and cofounder, The Story Elves. Education: Bachelor's degree in public relations and minor in art, University of Idaho, 2008. One year completed in MFA Graphic Design, Academy of Art University, San Francisco. Tell us about your career so far. My career is in an incredible place. I've already gotten the jobs that have made my college dreams a working reality. I'm living in that from day to day while simultaneously building new career aspirations. In addition to being the co-founder of a kids' production company called The Story Elves, I'm currently the creative director at Rainmaker, and I get to do incredible things for small businesses, both regionally and nationally. Working with small businesses was my dream in college, to be the person who builds the heart of the brand and keeps on beating through every design decision made about business. My job isn't just about building beautiful and resonating visual design, it's about building confidence in the minds of the business's customers. I'm not an artist for art's sake. I'm a commercial artist for business's sake. I've been really lucky, though luck is the residue of design, to speak many different career "languages," design, business, marketing, public relations, economics, psychology, and Web, among others, and I've found my sweet spot at the intersection of the things that I love most. I'm looking forward to staying in this intersection and also to where I'll be in the next five years. What are your aspirations? I have a few. 1. I want to make the world a better place for kids to live and thrive in. I believe we as a society spend time trying to squash the "kid" out of our youth. They go to college. They study what they think they should study instead of what interests them, they get married, have kids, but their happiness never comes the way the American Dream sells them. Then they hit 40, hate their life, don't feel happy, want to feel more creative, and the advice is to go back and think like a kid again. Well, then why did we pound it out of them in the first place? I want to help in that space. I was fortunate enough to have a mom who kept pushing me to stay in the arts even when I said, "I'll never make any money being creative." I hope to give more kids the power for their own creative passions, however they define creativity, and show them the money will follow. 2. I want to do work from my laptop in every major city in the world. Travel is the main way I recharge my creative juices, and I can't imagine the projects and ideas that will sketch from my fingertips in each new destination. 3. I want to keep creating work that carries me away in the "flow." You know: you lose track of time, no eating, barely registering to use the bathroom and you look back from your chair when you're done and think, "The day is gone, and it was totally worth it. Look what I made." That's an amazing feeling, being flush with pride before you ever reveal to another set of eyes. I crave that feeling. Tell us about your mentor or someone you look to for inspiration. I have a core group of people whose voices rotate in my head on a daily basis. Creatively speaking, my biggest inspiration is John Mayer. I think he's a lyrical genius. He can describe a decade of emotion in five words, and his lyrics are intimate and vulnerable. He's incredibly technically skilled, funny, and if you watch him perform, you can see passion oozing from every weird facial expression and every chord change. I have "where the light is" from his song, Gravity, tattooed on my wrist. I know, I'm an extremist, but not one of the weird ones. I'm not sure I'd ever meet him if I really got the opportunity, but he inspires me daily. I look up to kids, too. They're so insightful and they aren't scared to be wrong, say I don't know, ask questions or offer what seems like, to adults, an absolutely ludicrous idea that actually makes complete sense. Those guys know how to have fun with life and it doesn't matter who's watching. In our current economic environment, how do you feel about the opportunities for career advancement among people of your age/generation? I think my generation has to switch its frame of thinking in two ways. 1. Instead of waiting for opportunities, we need to make opportunities for ourselves. That could mean starting your own business, making yourself more valuable inside of the company you're currently in, or finding niche places that you're passionate about where your skills can be valuable. This takes confidence in your own abilities and bravery in your own voice to speak up, but if you understand that a business's bottom line is important for keeping the company open, ideas for growth will most likely never fall on deaf ears. We need to be the commanders of our own opportunities for growth and the commanders of our own interests. 2. I think we need to have more respect for our current place: our current job and our current place in our career. It's so easy to fall into "I hate my job," "My job isn't what I signed up for," or "today sucked" thinking. There are opportunities for education in every minute of my 8-to-5 day. This isn't an overstatement. It might be in communication, design, leadership, marketing, presentation, user interface, friendship, whatever. If you prime your mind to think about positive attributes, about how you're helping a bigger cause, specific new skills you're getting, the clients you love, the catered lunches the office provides, or even the awesome toilet paper in the company bathroom, you'll be a lot happier even if you don't think it's the "perfect job." The perfect job is a unicorn; it doesn't exist. My job is what I make it. And if I'm not happy at work now, odds are that has a lot more to do with me than it does with the job. Changing jobs doesn't fix the problem, changing my attitude does. Figure out how to wring the most out of your current position and never give an employer a reason to give you a less than stellar recommendation. Make them sad to lose you when you've created your next opportunity for advancement that isn't inside their company (see point 1). Something interesting/random about yourself. I'm a behavioral science and economics nerd. One of the many books I'm reading right now is "New Ideas from Dead Economists." I've flirted with the idea of getting an economics degree, just to have it hang on the shelf, but for now I've settled on my books and a weekly dose of the Freakonomics podcast. They're hilarious. (c) 2014 Northwest Business Press Inc. |