PHOENIX, ARIZONA
Jason Thompson
Career Interview- Graphic Designer
March 9, 2009 | by brett | Permalink
Jason Thompson is a graphic designer for Prisma Graphic, a printing company based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the only graphic designer the company employs. He is from Seattle, but has lived in Phoenix the last 20 years. He loves the Seahawks and the Suns.
I went to the Art Institute of Phoenix. […]
Lisa Clinchy
Career Interview- Firefighter
February 16, 2009 | by brett | Permalink
For this career profile we interviewed the battalion chief of a fire department, Lisa Clinchy. The firehouse lent signs of both family and fraternity- with a weight room, a ping pong table that was purchased from leftover grocery money, and a community room where we were able to eat lunch with the crew. Here’s some […]
Video Game Careers
Career Interview: Video Game Careers
February 9, 2009 | by brett | Permalink
Pursue the Passion visited Rainbow Studios in Phoenix, Arizona to interview seven people who produce video games for a living. Below is a video featuring everyone who was interviewed. To learn more about any job that was featured, click on the appropriate link below the video for a more in depth video and Q&A with […]
Leslie Carerra-Keys
Career Interview: Video Game Environment Artist
| by brett | Permalink
Leslie Carerra-Keys is a senior environment artist at the video game company, Rainbow Studios. She worked on the new video game, Deadly Creatures, released today on the Wii.
What’s an environmental artist do?
Basically all the environments you see in a video game is what we create. So we come up with the sky, and the all […]
Samuel Howard
Career Interview: Video Game Character Artist
| by brett | Permalink
Sam Howard is a senior character artist at Rainbow Studios in Phoenix, Arizona. He created many of the characters in the new game released on Wii, Deadly Creatures.
What does a senior character artist do?
A senior character artist takes concept art and brings characters to life.
Where do you mostly work?
Most of the time I’m here at […]
Dave Lowmiller
Career Interview- Senior Sound Designer
| by brett | Permalink
Dave Lowmiller is the Senior Sound Designer at Rainbow Studios in Phoenix, Arizona. The interview takes place in a sound studio with electronics galore. A guitar rests against a sound board. It’s a sound designers dream.
What do you do?
I spend a fair amount of time fighting with computers. But really, I create the sounds that […]
Dave Knudsen
Career Interview- Video Game Associate Producer
| by brett | Permalink
Dave Knudsen is an Associate Producer at the video game production company, Rainbow Studios in Phoenix, Arizona.
What does an Associate Producer of video games do?
Essentially my job is to make sure that certain deadlines are met and we stay within budget. I make sure things are met on time by removing all the unnecessary things that would […]
Elliot Olson
Career Interview- Technical Video Game Designer
| by brett | Permalink
Elliot Olson has been working at Rainbow Studios for six years. He is the Lead Technical Game Designer.
What’s your background?
My educational background is in engineering. I went to a game design college and morphed my path into design. I used to do a lot of extreme sports as well. I was pro snowboarder and […]
Bryan Moss
Career Interview- Video Game Technical Artist
| by brett | Permalink
Bryan Moss is the Technical Artist for the video game company, Rainbow Studios in Phoenix, Arizona. He has been with the company for 6 years.
What does a Technical Artist do?
Basically, I manage the communication between two departments. You have the programmers and you have the artists. I’m the go between the two. I make […]
Andrew Hair
Career Interview: Associate Software Engineer
| by brett | Permalink
Andrew Hair is the associate software engineer for Rainbow Studios, a video game company in Phoenix, Arizona.
What’s your story? How did you get here to Rainbow?
I went to Arizona State. I started at Rainbow Studios as an intern. I actually attended a career fair on campus and Rainbow was there looking to hire for full […]
Cece Harris
Career Interview: Video Game Recruiter
| by brett | Permalink
Cece Harris is the recruiter for video game company, Rainbow Studios in Phoenix, Arizona. Rainbow Studios has been making video games in the Valley for 23 years. Cece has been with the company for the last eight years and was among their first fifty employees. They now have 130 employees.
What’s the best way to make […]
Dan Subaitis
Director of Animal Management, Phoenix Zoo
January 26, 2009 | by brett | Permalink
Two condors, one mountain lion, four giraffes, and a solid group of men and women wearing dirty pants are under the direction of Dan Subaitis. As the Director of Animal Management at the Phoenix Zoo, Dan’s responsibility is to make sure the men and women in dirty pants properly care for the animals and plants […]
Rene Gutel
Freelance Radio Journalist
January 19, 2009 | by brett | Permalink
There are two desks in her home. One desk is illuminated by sunlight in her living room, where she makes a lot of phone calls and tries to line up interviews. The other desk sits in a converted garage, outlined by various plaques and awards that serves as motivation to produce another award winning story. […]
Joel Dickinson
Engineering a Return to School
December 21, 2008 | by brett | Permalink
This is the story of Joel Dickinson. He’s not rich. He’s not famous. He’s made a lot of the same choices and mistakes as the majority of us in our youth. But what makes Joel’s story so important is that when he realized he wasn’t happy with his situation, he did something about it.Joel did […]
Andrew Harrington
Brian Hugaboom of Collins College Drops By Big Bang Entertainment
December 18, 2008 | by brett | Permalink
This interview was submitted by Brian Hugaboom of Collins College.
Andrew Harrington attended the game design program at Collins College. After just a few months Andrew began to discover his talents and planned on how to use his new-found skills to get where he wanted to be. Andrew spent many late nights and weekends doing tutorials […]
Kyle Lauing
Adam Hernandez of Peoria High School Interviews a Game Design Instructor
December 11, 2008 | by brett | Permalink
My name is Adam Hernandez and currently a senior at Peoria High School. I had the pleasure of meeting Kyle Lauing at DeVry Day on October 10, 2008. He seems like a great person. He is the Instructor of The Game and Simulation course at DeVry University, Phoenix.
1) What is your title/position?
Instructor in Game and […]
Russ Haan
Brian Hugaboom Interviews The Founder of After Hours Creative
November 25, 2008 | by brett | Permalink
Russ Haan is the owner and founder of After Hours Creative. For over twenty years Russ and his team of creative professionals have been providing innovative advertising campaigns for such impressive clients as Target, Pepsi and Intel. Staying in business for 20 years in this business requires a lot of hard work and creativity. After […]
Trevor Hill
Brian Hugaboom of Collins College Gets Creative After Hours
November 24, 2008 | by brett | Permalink
Trevor Hill is the Senior Graphic Designer at After Hours Creative. Trevor began his career in Graphic Design doing freelance work after attending college for Graphic Design. From an early age Trevor wanted to design shoes for Nike. This passion for design led Trevor to pursue his passion and landed him a really cool job […]
Jason Moore
Colllins College intern Joseph Serrano interviews Pyzam.com President
November 19, 2008 | by brett | Permalink
Jason Moore is the 26 year old Co-Creator and President of the infamous PYZAM.COM, notorious for the millions of free flash toys and web layouts that are dispersed via the internet worldwide on his site every month.
Young and ambitious, Jason was a theater major at the University of Arizona for acting and directing. Due to […]
Carolina Barnes
Digital Dream Forge
November 18, 2008 | by brett | Permalink
Brian Hugaboom, one of the Collins College interns, interviewed Carolina Barnes, the owner of Digital Dream Forge.
Carolina runs Digital Dream Forge to develop web games, build websites, and e-learning programs. One of their clients if Kaiser Permanente. She wears many hats within the small business organization. She’s the CFO, part of the creative team, makes […]
Christopher Barr
On How He Became A Photographer
November 14, 2008 | by brett | Permalink
Christopher Barr started off his career as a photojournalist. Christopher’s work took him around the world in his twenties, visiting such places as Indonesia, Thailand and China. It was a trip into the Amazon Rainforest on which he got lost, became ill and almost missed his pickup home that he decided to search for work […]
Mr. Hinds
Summary of Interviews With Three Teachers
November 3, 2008 | by brett | Permalink
Although I am in a classroom nearly every day and talk to the teachers about the students and teaching, I decided to interview three different teachers.
How did they describe their job? They need to know when and how to discipline, how to gain 6 year olds’ respect, and most importantly, how to get 20 1st […]
Lonnie Williams Jr.
The Law With Lonnie Williams Jr.
August 15, 2008 | by brett | Permalink
Lonnie Williams Jr. never looked at law school as a fall back option. To him, becoming a lawyer was a dream. That attitude has propelled him to the pinnacle of his profession.
I was the first African American lawyer in Phoenix in a large firm. I became a partner, which means I had an ownership in […]
Ray Karam
Perfecting a Flavor
June 6, 2008 | by brett | Permalink
Ray Karam has one of the coolest job descriptions of anyone working- taste, innovate, and create new flavors of ice cream.
As the Senior Tastemaster for Cold Stone Creamery, the only time the Brooklyn born Ray stops talking about ice cream is when he pauses to sample a spoonful of one of his latest creations. Five […]
DJ Strawberry
The Airwaves
May 12, 2008 | by brett | Permalink
Gateway Early College High School is the first school to have adopted the Pursue the Passion program, where students venture into their community to interview people who hold jobs they are interested in. Gateway decided to purchase video cameras and edit clips of their interviews for their senior capstone class presentation. Today I attended Luis […]
Rick Welts
Mindful Marketing
October 5, 2007 | by Noah on the writeup.. Jay on the Video | Permalink
Rick Welts, president of the Phoenix Suns basketball organization, can be credited as partially responsible for making the NBA what it is today. In 1982, Rick, inspired by a Cracker Jack old timers baseball game, began to seek corporations to sponsor the NBA, which at the time was not the product that it is today. […]
Anita Malik
Gifts and Gaps
July 16, 2007 | by brett | Permalink
It was time for Anita Malik to do a gut check. After another meeting with her newspaper employer in which her ideas were shook off a shoulder, Anita sat at her desk and looked at her gifts.
She had three college degrees, including the masters in journalism she had gone back to get at USC, along […]
Andrew Hasbun
Media Excellence
July 14, 2007 | by noah | Permalink
When Andrew Hasbun decided to try to make it big in the world of television news, he left Los Angeles and moved to Medford, Oregon. Although this seems counter-intuitive, it is in fact the route followed by nearly all who commit their lives to the news.
After Medford, Andrew found himself in Jackson, Mississippi, and was […]
David Kravetz
A Brownie Fairytale
July 13, 2007 | by noah | Permalink
At 25, with a degree in mechanical engineering, David Kravetz decided he wanted to sell brownies. David, along with his lifelong friend and business partner Eileen Spitalny, moved to Phoenix, found day jobs, and spent many nights in a friend’s catering kitchen armed only with his mother’s brownie recipe and a disturbing lack of experience. […]
Scott Foreman
Passion in Post-Production
July 12, 2007 | by noah | Permalink
“Is this path the right one? Am I doing the right thing?” These are the questions Scott Foreman, Director of Post-Production for Jobing.com, asked himself when he was 22, working as an unpaid production intern for a television station in San Francisco. Lack of pay did not stop Scott from doing what he loves. What […]
Mary Gilbaugh
Controlling the Cap
July 10, 2007 | by noah | Permalink
From a young age Mary Gilbaugh knew she wanted to work in professional sports, but her corporate accounting career path took a few bends before her childhood dream would be realized. After running track for two years at USC, Mary confidently entered the world of corporate accounting only to realize the fifteen hour days were […]
Brian Mohr
From Humble Beginnings
| by noah | Permalink
At 22, living at home after graduation and working for a large financial services corporation as an account executive, Brian did not find his passion, but rather found vital experience in the corporate world. After a few years, including a short stay in a log cabin in Wisconsin, Brian accepted a transfer opportunity to Phoenix. […]
Bruce Haffner
Eye in the Sky
July 9, 2007 | by brett | Permalink
With the loud engine roar and blades rapidly revolving, a helicopter lands at a school assembly full of awestruck first graders. A man in a captain suit cuts the engine and hops out of the cockpit to wave to the crowd. The school erupts in excitement.
Amongst the crowd there is a young first grader who […]
Jim Cassandro
Psychology and Baseball
June 21, 2006 | by brett | Permalink
When Jim was in the third grade, he wrote an essay about how he wanted to be a professional baseball player when he grew up. Throughout elementary, middle, and high school this dream never faded. That is, until he broke his wrist one year in high school and was unable to play. That year he […]
Joyce Richards
Junior Achievement
May 16, 2006 | by brett | Permalink
Joyce Richards is the President of the Phoenix Junior Achievement office, and was a very interesting individual. She did not attend college, and out of high school worked in the private industry before finding a personal satisfaction in education. She has been at Junior Achievement for ten years, and is very passionate for making a […]
Karl Eller
The Bankrupt Millionaire
| by brett | Permalink
Karl Eller graduated from the University of Arizona in 1952 and claims to have made more money in college than he did in his first six years therafter. He went into the billboard business where he worked his way up from a lease man, to a sales rep. He then gathered up the confidence to […]