My name is Carlota, and I'm your friendly Creativity Yenta.™
Translation: I help you connect the dots on what you've been missing, or seeking, or longing for. As an advocate for your best interests, located outside of your situation, I can help you "get" it. Then, together, we create a creative, personalized and highly accessible strategy to help you achieve what you've been seeking. I help you envision and create the opportunities you need to fulfill your goals. Sound weird? Exciting? Maybe even a little bit liberating? Ahh...now you're getting it!
I have the background of any entrepreneur: I've done a lot of different things. I like challenges and I'm an inherent risk-taker. I learn from my mistakes, and I use those lessons to help you!
I grew up in NYC, and was on Sesame Street as a child actor (#redundant). Truly, no matter what else I achieve, I can never top being on Sesame Street. Clearly, I peaked at age four, when I was hanging out with Oscar the Grouch in his garbage can, and chatting about the alphabet with my close, personal friend, Big Bird.
I went to Hunter College Elementary School. In time, I graduated from Saint Ann's School. In my yearbook, the (in)famous Stanley Bosworth wrote, "Give 'em hell, Carlota!" Well, if you insist... I had my first play produced Off-Broadway, when I was 18 years old. With the guidance and support of my wonderful theater teacher, Nancy Fales-Garett, my play, Man At His Best, won the 1991 Young Playwrights' Festival.
I am a graduate of Wellesley College, so I guess Rush would call me a "feminazi" but honestly: I do have an excellent if "earthy" sense of humor. (I've talked many a client down from the ledge with my snarky if wonderful wit.) I date all the time and I use mascara and wear very tight jeans. (And you're welcome, America.) On the other hand, yes, if you refer to Wellesley as a "girl's school," you will get The Look...so, don't do it, don't ruin your day.
I spent my junior year of college "studying" (...kinda...) in a little town in Russia, and, upon graduating from college, I moved to Moscow. Clearly I didn't have enough angst in my life. Speaking of tsoursis, Moscow is where I got my start in TV news, working for NBC's Moscow Bureau. I had no TV experience, but I was fluent in Russian, which was all they cared about. (I would say I'm currently "conversant" in Russian and fluent in sarcasm and profanity.)
I spent the next 8 years working in TV news in Russia, Washington, D.C. and New York, for CNN, MS/NBC, FOX and ABC News. I got my experience working in the trenches of news. I was a field producer, package producer, writer, assignment editor, guest booker and ops producer. You're wondering if TV news is as sexy and glamorous and rewarding as you've heard. (That sound you hear is me choking on my bile, as I laugh bitterly.)
Let's see: a nationally-known reporter threw a water cooler at me in frustration, after the evening news broadcast cancelled his live-shot. Spoiler alert: he missed! The next day, he presented me with flowers and said, carefully: "I was wrong to throw that at you." I was 23 and thought the whole situation was very funny. (Also: he did miss...) Anchors asked unintentionally hilarious questions; writers threw phones at me; two women once had a fist-fight in the control room at 3:00 am, and we worked around them to get the show on the air; a producer asked a friend of mine if Alaska was a state; another producer wondered what "NPR" stood for. I made quite a few producers cry because they missed their deadlines. Kumbayah my lord/kumbayah/oh lord, Kumbayah... I enjoyed the smell of Napalm in the morning.
And then, after all that...that "something"...I went to law school. (Insert sad trombone noise here.) Like many people, I went for all the wrong reasons: I went because I didn't want to take responsibility for figuring out what I should really be doing with my life. I went for the prestige. I went because I got in. I went because it was a three year escape...or so I thought. #FAIL. But I was lucky: IU-Bloomington Maurer School of Law is a wonderful place, and I met some great people. Mercifully, most of the first year of law school has vanished from my mind, to be replaced by inappropriate jokes, poetry and 1980's song lyrics. I spent a summer studying in India. I spent another summer interning with Senator Hillary Clinton, working in her immigration section. We had us some good times in B-town...oh, and that six-figure law school debt. (Alas.) After graduating in 2007, I returned to writing plays and I currently have a new play headed into production. My first play has been touring for the past three years. (Mother's so proud!)
Getting back in touch with my creativity saved my life.With that in mind, I started this business in order to help other people live out their richest potential. Because when you are engaged in work that uses all of your skills, your passion and your intelligence...well then, you hit the jackpot. You're truly alive. Some might say, you're really lucky. But the only luck I believe in, is the luck you make. I believe in courage, determination and hard work. Which means that you can do this. And I can help!
"Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates."
-Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain
xo
Carlota
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