Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545099
48 M PS E . O R G technology was still heavily gate-kept … Pro Tools was still very new. While there were certainly barriers and walls to overcome, many men early in my career chose to mentor me, challenge me, and help me gain access to opportunities that changed my life. I remain grateful for that. In my career, there have been so many mentors. I cannot even begin to name them all. Al Decker CAS, Todd Langner, Andy D'Addario CAS, Sean Atkins, Sherry Klein CAS, Teri Dorman MPSE… I am honored by them all. Another important lesson I've embraced is that mentorship is not hierarchical. Mentors can be older, younger, peers, assistants, editors, mixers, supervisors, or students. If you stay curious and open, you can learn something valuable from almost everyone around you. That philosophy continues to shape how I work today. What are some of the projects you are particularly happy with in regards to your contributions to final mixes? Every project teaches you something, so it's difficult to choose only a few. On New Girl, I had the surreal experience of working on a show I genuinely loved and watched in my personal life before joining it professionally. I was a fan girl of my own show, and as a half-hour comedy, its dialogue required a different treatment and rhythm. Grey's Anatomy taught me the importance of consistency and nuance inside an established sonic language. Each episode needed to live inside a recognizable world while still supporting new emotional experiences and contemporary themes through subtle shifts in perspective and detail. The Blumhouse Into the Dark feature film anthology series allowed me to push much further into abstract and psychological sound work as a SFX mixer. Because every installment had different directors and tonal approaches, I learned how to work quickly, boldly, and collaboratively while adapting stylistically from project to project. For All Mankind was creatively inspiring because it built an alternate history vision of the space race that felt both grounded and emotionally aspirational. The scale of the world- building and the optimism of the storytelling made it a particularly memorable experience for me. Loki taught me a great deal about leadership and collaboration at a high level. Bjorn Schroeder's leadership on that project was deeply influential because he consistently advocated for the team while strategically navigating filmmakers, studio expectations, schedules, and an enormously beloved IP. It was one of the clearest examples I've seen of leadership creating an environment where artists could do their best work. On Tiny Beautiful Things, I was reminded how deeply storytelling can affect people personally. The care and emotional sensitivity from every department, including editorial, music, and mix, created something that resonated with me profoundly and genuinely changed my perspective on relationships within my own family. On Miller's Girl, where I worked in dialogue editorial, I learned an enormous amount about noise management, tonal masking, subtle ambience work, and preserving intimacy in difficult production conditions. I was also incredibly impressed by how the final mix used environmental sound and insects almost subconsciously to support character psychology throughout the film. What continues to inspire me most is that every project, whether editorial or mixing, becomes a collaboration of many artists shaping emotional experience together. This is part of what inspired Steven and I to bring the idea of The Sounding Board to CAS and MPSE as a joint annual event to share and exchange knowledge and experience. In addition to your very busy work CV, you have also served on the Cinema Audio Society Board of Directors, been their publication editor, as well as serving as President of the organization. You have also volunteered as a Golden Reel judge, and served on the Entertainment Industry Professionals Mentoring Alliance (EIPMA) and now are serving on the Board of Directors of the Motion Picture Editors Guild… Service has always felt like a natural extension of the work itself. Sound is profoundly collaborative. No soundtrack exists because of one person. Editors, assistants, ADR and Foley mixers, Foley artists, music editors, production and post mixers, supervisors, engineers, coordinators, stage techs, producers, and filmmakers all contribute to the final emotional experience audiences receive. "Sound is profoundly collaborative… Because of that, I believe we have a responsbility not only to do excellent work indiviudally, but to advocate for each other collectively." –KAROL URBAN MPSE CAS