What About Me Wednesday: What I Do

I have to say, I think I'm more jet lagged after returning from New Mexico than after I returned from Spain in May. I just cannot seem to get enough sleep or simply get it together! Saturday morning, I hope you arrive soon! :) Meanwhile, I'm downing lots of this...

A few days ago, I received a question from reader Sherri, asking me what I do for a living. I thought this was a great question for What About Me Wednesday!

I like to say that my career has been accidental in that I never knew about the industry I work in, until I got a temp job almost 6 years ago. I landed in brand licensing. You are probably thinking...what does that mean? I was too.

Let me start from the beginning.

I graduated from NYU with a degree in Communications. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew that I wanted to work in some sort of television or media. At that time, I still had a passion somewhere inside me for writing, but I had no idea how to acknowledge it.

throwback of Dad & me at a pre-graduation event

As graduation approached, my parents really pushed me to explore going to grad school full-time. I decided to continue at NYU and I worked toward a degree in Media Ecology. I did toy with the idea of continuing on for a PhD, but realized that it simply wasn't for me. I wanted to be a business woman! ...err...or something like that.

When I had only a few classes left, I realized that I could start working full time. Scary!

So a-job hunting I went. It was still hard to find a job then for a recent grad, even though I guess the economy was in a much better place. I applied for everything and anything I could find that was semi-applicable. Then one day, I got a call from Sesame Workshop (Sesame Street) in response to my application for a temp job. The job was as an assistant in global toys. Though I didn't want a temp job (at all), I couldn't help being intrigued by global toys at Sesame Street.

The temp job was actually an open position and I was hired quickly after. My career in brand licensing was born! After a year, I moved to another position in toys, where I got to work on product development. For those of you who don't understand brand licensing (as I didn't), a brand like Sesame Street does not manufacture its own products that consumers buy for their children. They instead license the brand to a top tier toy company (or any other of the 700 companies they work with) who manufactures products. The team works hand in hand to ensure that the products are all on-brand, aligning with Sesame's mission and doing many, many checks to ensure that Cookie Monster's pupils are properly googly. (I'm seriously simplifying it here, but you get the idea). It was a great place to work.

After 4 years, I moved on from Sesame and got a job at a small brand licensing agency in lower Manhattan. I've been a brand manager here for over 2 years now. It's essentially the same concept as what I did at Sesame, but we represent many brands and work with them to create a full licensing program...products beyond their core business. I do many other things beyond product development at my current job, including a lot of writing. I love working for a small company because I get to work on lots of projects and everyday is different!

So that's how I 'fell' into my career thus far. I like to think that my blog is my other job since I spend so much time working on it, writing articles, planning recipes and telling anyone within earshot about it (and the fact that I love it so much :) ). Someday down the road, my dream is to own a business or be self-employed somehow!

So there you have it. A not-so-quick description of how I pay the bills these days. I hope I didn't put you to sleep :)

Questions of the Day:

What do you do for a living?

What is your dream job?