Business | Fashion | Video Production | YouTube
Episode Info:
Pooja Tripathi is an Indian American filmmaker, actress, and musician. She grew up in Pittsburgh & New York City, and studied Business Administration and Violin Performance at Carnegie Mellon University. Pooja began her career in the fashion industry, working in buying and digital marketing at top brands including Fendi, Bloomingdale’s, and Dior. She entered the world of film production as a producer of video content for Videofashion covering New York Fashion Week, and she is now Executive Producer at female-based production company Fountain Avenue Productions. Pooja is also the founder of event series The Affairs which showcases the next generation of talent in classical and jazz music in NYC.
Here we go with the episode:
Below is the excerpts of un-edited auto-transcribed version of the episode:
Naga Subramanya B B 5:52
Okay, so if you have to answer the question of what’s your passion, what would it be?
Pooja Tripathi 5:58
I would definitely say that my passion Is film and TV. And it’s funny, because I didn’t actually know, this is something you could work in when I was younger. So it’s something I was always consuming and really enjoying, but I didn’t realize what it’d be like to work in it. And once I started working about that one production job and then working with Dion on the side, I got to see how much fun it was and how cool it was to come up with an idea. And you know, you just you come up with an idea in your head. Next thing, you know, you’re casting and you have all these people in front of you. They’re auditioning to play a role that you made up and it’s just a while to see something go from your brain to happening in front of you. And then after that to a screen where everyone can see it. So I realized that passion when we started working together, I was still in my job and she was living in LA. I was taking vacation days so that I can fly over to LA and basically just work with her on casting and It was so much fun and people at work didn’t really know what it was I was doing. But I was having a great time. And I would just kind of go back to work, go to my desk and just be so excited to leave at the end of the day and get to work more on our projects.
Naga Subramanya B B 7:17
Right. So you mentioned that, you know, you did this switch from being a pre med to, you know, a business major right for your bachelor’s? how did how did your family take that? And, you know, how did how did you make that transition in your head because one of the things that I personally struggled with a lot is letting go of decisions that I’ve thought I’ve made. And drawing that line is something that that I struggled with. So I’m really interested to know how you manage that face.
Pooja Tripathi 7:49
Yeah, that’s definitely a really difficult thing. And I think for me, a really big lesson has been trying to do things for myself versus doing things for the validation. about other people, because no matter where you get in your career, you’ll never receive the full level of validation that you want from the outside world. And so for me, at first switching out of pre med and into business, I was able to convince while I was basically thinking, you know, I’m I have to live with whatever this decision is. So if other people tell me, you should be a doctor, and then I just say yes, to please them. That’s a really, first of all, Doctor of all things. That’s a really long time commitment. I’ll be in school for so long, and so much money on med school. And you know, that’s a huge investment. So it would actually not be beneficial in the long run if I didn’t like it because I wasted like 10 years and tons of money. So I thought, No, I have to take control of this now. I think the even more difficult thing was saying I want to leave my corporate job to do something on my own. And you know, work for film and film production. That’s something that’s a worldwide parent. really don’t know. And I think the way I was able to make that happen is just by showing results. Of course, it’s difficult in the beginning, because you have to learn about whatever it is you want to do if your career switch is in a field that you don’t have much experience. And for me, I had to learn a lot about TV and film. And during that time, I really didn’t want to be influenced by all the outside voices. Because you know, you can’t be amazing at something when you first start out. And you have to have that learning period. So I just really wanted to protect myself at that time, so that I wouldn’t get critical comments from other people like, Oh, you went to business school, you think you can work in film production? Why do you think you can do that you’re not you don’t have a artistic background, or you know, those types of comments. I really didn’t want that to interfere with my learning process.
If you would like to read entire transcript, check out the episode in medium article here.