BIO
Born,
Alissa had ideas. She had talents and plans and a penchant
for wearing tiaras. Thankfully, her parents nurtured this
need to create, providing her with the necessary accoutrements:
non-toxic paints, double-sided tape, Exacto knives with
safety blades. Her mother enlisted her assistance in her
floral design company. Her father gave her a video camera
to record her never-ending run of productions, most performed
on the stage that was constructed in their basement, and
most starring her.
Determined not
to become prematurely disenchanted with the daily monotony
of elementary education, Alissa turned to the extracurricular.
Academics took a back seat to her other full-time commitments
as she danced, painted, organized, sang, and wrote her way
through school. As a sixteen-year-old managing a 60-hour
workweek, she contracted an inevitable case of mono. She
recovered in time to begin construction on the Homecoming
float.
At everyone’s
urging to mellow out, Alissa attended the University of
Colorado. The journalism school required the writing classes
she loved while allowing her the flexibility to indulge
in her other passions: singing, art, design and, now, drinking
beer. And while she was sometimes the life of the party,
she often gave parties life, coordinating huge themed events
and intimate dinners. Forever the consummate overachiever,
Alissa managed to cram four years of partying into three-and-a-half
years, graduating early and enrolling in the Portfolio Center
in Atlanta to begin her career in advertising.
Atlanta was heaven,
but hotter. Alissa was finally immersed in a fully creative
curriculum, working with designers, photographers, art directors
and other writers to produce Really Good Ads. Alissa took
internships at D’Arcy/St. Louis, Sixty-Second Airborne
and MATCH, Inc., and in the spring of 2000, she was selected
to represent her school at the One Show in New York. In
the spring of 2001, she was released into one of the worst
industry environments in the history of advertising. After
three months of interviewing, Alissa contracted yet another
virus. She recovered in time to end her career in advertising.
On to Los Angeles,
without a job, but with not-so-lofty dreams of becoming
a karaoke superstar. Those plans were only slightly altered
when she got a job at Brass Knuckles, an editorial house
in Venice. She was soon promoted to producer, in charge
of herding various music videos and commercials through
to completion. But she still sings regularly and does take
requests. And she always, always has ideas.
Currently, Alissa
is working on several collections of poems, essays, fiction
and memorable emails. She’s a producer at Brass Knuckles,
the same great company that allows her to flex her party
throwing muscles three times a year. She continues to freelance
in advertising, her preferred medium being radio. In late
fall, Alissa hosts Crafternoons, a series of workshops for
making hip holiday gifts. Most weekends, she can be found
scouring estate sales in the greater Los Angeles area in
search of treasures. She is a board member for CoachArt,
a charity that provides lessons in the arts for children
undergoing chemotherapy. And although she hopes that she’ll
be able to plan your next event, she assures you that she
will definitely be able to attend.
A few links:
www.portfoliocenter.com
(the school that saved Alissa’s soul)
www.coachart.org
(a truly worthwhile cause)
