Animating Life (feat. Dave Werner of Adobe and Character Animator)

Dave Werner (class of 2002) started his career as an educator and is now a senior designer at Adobe working on their groundbreaking Character Animator software. Character Animator has been used by everyone from The Simpsons to ordinary people streaming video games to do live animation that makes motion capture-like technology for 2D animation accessible and quick. Learn about his path towards a creative career from not knowing where he would end up in college, and some of the lessons he picked up along the way.

Filling In the Grid (feat. Sam Ezersky of NYT Crosswords)

Sam Ezersky is the associate crossword editor for the New York Times, and works on their Spelling Bee and Letterboxed word games daily. Max Patten interview Sam and gets the story of how he went from studying mechanical engineering and economics to working with Will Shortz, getting millions of Americans to fill in grids daily.

Improvising the Performance (feat. Allison Mui)

For our fourth episode, Alison Mui joins Max to talk about how she went from being a drama kid to improv in college, and a current career as the PR director of New Victory, New York’s nonprofit and family focused community theater.

Data, Journalism, and Adaption (feat. Kennedy Elliott)

Kennedy Elliott of the National Geographic speaks to Max about how she went from a UVA Media Studies degree to following a career in digital journalism and data visualization.

Entrepeneurship vs. the Establishment (feat. Tarek Pertew)

For the second episode of Whose Shoulders, UVA McIntire alum Tarek Pertew talks about how he went from climbing the corporate ladder to entrepreneur, to CCO at tech hiring platform Uncubed and the founder of New York City’s fastest growing soccer league. This is a story of post financial-crisis struggle, disenchantment, personal divides, and overcoming them to bring people together.

Making Video Games (feat. Susannah Jones)

For the debut episode, Max Patten interviews Susannah Jones, class of 2017. Susannah grew up loving games as a method of both artistic expression and social connection. Unfortunately, the video games industry can be difficult, unstable, and at times even discriminatory.

From a childhood spent with Pokémon and drawing to a college environment that, while vibrant, wasn’t huge on the arts, listen to find out how Susannah turned her passion into a reality and discover the amazing resources and people she met along the way.