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Jellyvision Founder Makes the Uninteresting Fun

By Jacob Nelson

Harry Gottlieb makes learning fun, and that means making it funny. It’s something he’s good at because, in one way or another, he’s been practicing for decades.

Gottlieb is the founder of Jellyvision, the Chicago-based multimedia company behind the trivia computer game You Don’t Know Jack and, more recently ALEX, an interactive program that uses humor and straightforward language to teach corporate employees about health care plans and retirement savings, to name a few of its offerings.

“I’ve always been super interested in making and learning and engaging,” Gottlieb said, “I’m particularly interested in things that are non-interesting and complex.”

Gottlieb will be discussing his career at Northwestern on Thursday, Feb. 4 at 5:15 p.m. (more…)

CBS Vice President and Executive Talks TV, Gives Career Advice

Jane Gottlieb’s career was largely self-invented and built brick by brick in small steps.

Days out of Northwestern, Jane landed a job in the then-nascent field of ‘corporate AV (as it was then called) and never looked back.   Producing meetings and events for blue chip companies required a boatload of skills: theme development, proposal and scriptwriting, budgeting, casting, art directing, to name just a few — skills honed in real time, on the job. (more…)

MSLCE Student Hopes to Turn Television Passion Into Industry Career

By Amy A. Ross

Morgan Zankich takes her television watching very seriously. She invests a significant amount of her time and attention watching shows, assessing their quality and trying to figure out what makes them work.

“My hobbies pretty much revolve around watching television. I have most of the streaming apps like Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, HBO Now and Showtime AnyTime,” said the 22 year-old Cornell graduate.

Zankich’s life-long interest in television turned into something more over the past few years, as she developed a fascination with the television industry and a desire to become a part of it. (more…)

MSLCE Students Learn What It Takes To Be A Project Manager

By John Matthew Simon

Today, we’re taking a look at one of our core classes and what students learned. Here’s MSLCE student John Matthew Simon describing our Project Management course, taught by Dan Heck:

Managing projects in creative environments can be difficult due to the emotive nature of creatives and their ideation processes. As future leaders who will need to welcome change by embracing innovation, students analyzed creative organizations like Cirque du Soleil (more…)

MSLCE Program Director Reflects on the Fall Quarter

We have been busy implementing a series of changes to accommodate the growth of the Master of Science in Leadership for Creative Enterprises (MSLCE) program in its second year. The thirty-six students who are enrolled this year are benefiting from the addition of new classes and extracurricular activities designed to enhance their learning experience and career development potential. These changes include:

  • Four new classes: Organizational Processes in Creative Enterprises (fall), Professional Development (fall, winter, and spring), Marketing Strategies in Creative Industries (spring), and Culture and Globalization (spring).
  • Monthly site visits to Chicago-area creative sector organizations.
  • Twice-a-quarter, day-long executive education workshops that allow students to focus on competencies and knowledge that are essential for a successful career in the creative sector.
  • Twice-a-quarter seminars with distinguished Northwestern faculty who do not teach in the program but whose research is relevant to understanding the creative sector.
  • Social outings and community service projects to help build a positive and engaged culture among the student body.

(more…)

MSLCE Students Get Real Life Experience Analyzing Organizations

By Ben Levine

Today, we’re taking a look at one of our core classes and what students learned. Here’s MSLCE student Ben Levine describing our Organizational Processes course taught by MSLCE director Pablo Boczkowski.

The Organizational Processes course is the base that helps us understand how organizations function. We analyzed case studies using “The Three Lenses” perspective as a means of breaking organizations down into the various components that make them work. The lenses are: strategic design, political, and cultural. All of our cases focused on the creative fields and we even got to work directly with a local arts organization on a group project where we provided in-depth analysis of the organization and offered suggestions for how they can best handle a large change they’re going through.

From Sculpting to Stand-Up Comedy, MSLCE Student Reimagines Her Career in the Arts

By Amy A. Ross

Allison Riddle has long intuited her life would revolve around the arts; however, it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that she even imagined a career in comedy.

Riddle attended Eastern Michigan University, and during that time she developed her skills as a sculptor using non-traditional materials like fabrics and fibers.

Upon graduating in 2012, Riddle was confident she wanted to work in the arts, and equally confident that she didn’t want to be an artist.

She worked a couple of non-art jobs, including marketing for the Jimmy John’s restaurant chain, before spontaneously moving to Chicago two years ago and discovering her love of comedy. (more…)