Aviva R. Pusey
If you want to create your dream career, you might take an opportunistic route and design your own unique career path. That’s what Cecilia Mejia is doing as she divides her career between nonprofit consultant and social impact producer (a job title I had not heard of till I saw it listed in one of Mejia’s recent projects, the documentary, Call Her Ganda). Mejia’s latest project, Yellow Rose, is an upcoming feature film, starring Tony award winner Lea Salonga and Tony nominee Eva Noblezada. “Yellow Rose” has been selected to open this year’s LA Asian Pacific Film Festival in May.
Mejia didn’t go to film school, but started her career in the nonprofit sector. Seven years ago, she was working for the Filipino American Legal Defense and Education Fund, when Diane Paragas, the Filipina director of “Yellow Rose”, contacted Mejia for information on social impact issues. They hit it off and created a documentary together, which became proof of concept for what is now, “Yellow Rose.” Mejia has raised over $500,000 for the project over the last seven years. In addition to raising money, Mejia acts as a creative lead for this and other projects she produces.
There are important career lessons from Mejia’s story, if you have multiple interests and wonder how to weave disparate fields together, or if you are trying to change careers into something different than what you did before:
1 - Be open to opportunities
If Mejia didn’t take that call from Diana Paragas and agree to help, her career would look very different than what it is today.
I know too many busy professionals who don’t take the time to return unsolicited calls or work on side projects. Yes, these ancillary activities mean extra time and effort, but they are a great way to expand your network and opportunities.
2 - Build on the skills and expertise you already have
While film producer may not be the logical career choice for someone with a Masters in Public Administration and years of nonprofit experience, Mejia feels her nonprofit experience does prepare her the film side. She credits her development experience with helping her through the fundraising for films. She also credits her time in nonprofit with helping her tell stories effectively and giving her projects a social impact lens. While Mejia admits she wishes she took a film class in school, she has been able to build a solid career without the formal training. One piece romance dawn psp cwcheat download.
Don’t assume that you need formal training or a specific background to enter your field of interest!
3 - Get started and refine along the way
Mejia got started with film projects and refined her approach as she moved along. Mejia and Paragas worked alone on “Yellow Rose” until they could raise enough money to hire additional help. Mejia was already raising money and in contract negotiations before she established an LLC strictly for her film projects.
Too many people belabor over process and structure – should I have an LLC, a website, separate business cards? Career changers would be better served, like Mejia, jumping into work when you get it and formalizing and course-correcting as you go.
4 - You may not have to choose – think about a portfolio career that encompasses multiple interests
Mejia is still active in the nonprofit field as a development consultant and grant writer. Film production has a long lead time, and while she makes some money as a producer, most of the funds raised for the film go into making the movie and post-production.
Consulting in your former field is a great option for people who may want to start something new but still want or need to be involved in their earlier career.
5 - Do good work
Building any career, whether a career change or traditional career, requires tangible results in order to progress. Mejia raised money. Her films get distribution. Her latest film is opening a high-profile film festival in Los Angeles, the movie capital of the world. Her career story works because her career shows progress and wins along the way.
If you are changing careers or trying to carve out a unique career path, focus on tangible wins so you have something to build on and gain momentum.
Surrounding yourself with real-life examples of people succeeding with unique career paths is a great way to stay motivated while you work on your own career. This is why I love sharing profiles like Cecilia Mejia (or Nancy Monson, who discovered her current career while moonlighting, or Joyce Mariner, who retired from policing and became a cruise planner). What is your favorite career change story?
'>Cecilia Mejia. Photo Credit: Aviva R. Pusey
Aviva R. PuseyIf you want to create your dream career, you might take an opportunistic route and design your own unique career path. That’s what Cecilia Mejia is doing as she divides her career between nonprofit consultant and social impact producer (a job title I had not heard of till I saw it listed in one of Mejia’s recent projects, the documentary, Call Her Ganda). Mejia’s latest project, Yellow Rose, is an upcoming feature film, starring Tony award winner Lea Salonga and Tony nominee Eva Noblezada. “Yellow Rose” has been selected to open this year’s LA Asian Pacific Film Festival in May.
Mejia didn’t go to film school, but started her career in the nonprofit sector. Seven years ago, she was working for the Filipino American Legal Defense and Education Fund, when Diane Paragas, the Filipina director of “Yellow Rose”, contacted Mejia for information on social impact issues. They hit it off and created a documentary together, which became proof of concept for what is now, “Yellow Rose.” Mejia has raised over $500,000 for the project over the last seven years. In addition to raising money, Mejia acts as a creative lead for this and other projects she produces.
Sandisk ultra 3d 500gb. There are important career lessons from Mejia’s story, if you have multiple interests and wonder how to weave disparate fields together, or if you are trying to change careers into something different than what you did before:
1 - Be open to opportunities
If Mejia didn’t take that call from Diana Paragas and agree to help, her career would look very different than what it is today.
I know too many busy professionals who don’t take the time to return unsolicited calls or work on side projects. Yes, these ancillary activities mean extra time and effort, but they are a great way to expand your network and opportunities.
2 - Build on the skills and expertise you already have
I'm An Actor And Director. Should I Have Separate Social Media Accounts
While film producer may not be the logical career choice for someone with a Masters in Public Administration and years of nonprofit experience, Mejia feels her nonprofit experience does prepare her the film side. She credits her development experience with helping her through the fundraising for films. She also credits her time in nonprofit with helping her tell stories effectively and giving her projects a social impact lens. While Mejia admits she wishes she took a film class in school, she has been able to build a solid career without the formal training.
3 - Get started and refine along the way
Mejia got started with film projects and refined her approach as she moved along. Mejia and Paragas worked alone on “Yellow Rose” until they could raise enough money to hire additional help. Mejia was already raising money and in contract negotiations before she established an LLC strictly for her film projects.
Too many people belabor over process and structure – should I have an LLC, a website, separate business cards? Career changers would be better served, like Mejia, jumping into work when you get it and formalizing and course-correcting as you go.
4 - You may not have to choose – think about a portfolio career that encompasses multiple interests
Mejia is still active in the nonprofit field as a development consultant and grant writer. Film production has a long lead time, and while she makes some money as a producer, most of the funds raised for the film go into making the movie and post-production.
Consulting in your former field is a great option for people who may want to start something new but still want or need to be involved in their earlier career.
5 - Do good work
Building any career, whether a career change or traditional career, requires tangible results in order to progress. Mejia raised money. Her films get distribution. Her latest film is opening a high-profile film festival in Los Angeles, the movie capital of the world. Her career story works because her career shows progress and wins along the way.
Surrounding yourself with real-life examples of people succeeding with unique career paths is a great way to stay motivated while you work on your own career. This is why I love sharing profiles like Cecilia Mejia (or Nancy Monson, who discovered her current career while moonlighting, or Joyce Mariner, who retired from policing and became a cruise planner). What is your favorite career change story?
Social media is a powerful tool for groups engaged in terrorist activities. The extremist content they post have sparked widespread changes across social networks. But, are those changes enough? That’s the question representatives from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube addressed this week, speaking before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in a hearing in Washington, D.C.
The hearing was designed to look into the social networks’ current efforts into curbing extremist content, opening up a discussion on tech companies’ role in stunting the spread of online propaganda. While the companies have previously testified on Russian interference in the U.S. election, this hearing was the first time the companies spoke to the commerce committee on extremist content.
All three networks demonstrated a significant increase in the number of content removed from their respective platforms, as well as preventing the information in the first place. In some cases, the networks’ efforts overlap, including the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism for information sharing, while a database of more than 40,000 “hashes” helps keep content recognized on one network, off another.
Facebook’s head of Product Policy and Counterterrorism, Monika Bickert, said that Facebook is now able to remove 99 percent of ISIS and Al Qaeda-related posts before reaching a human flagger, thanks largely to machine learning; Facebook’s AI platform looks through image, video, and text material. The company is also working to teach the system how to recognize posts that support a terrorist organization (rather than generating false positives on posts condoning the behavior, for example).
For Facebook, AI is also being used to prevent some content uploads. Image matching prevents other accounts from uploading videos previously removed by the company. The company also works with experts “to track propaganda released by these groups and proactively insert it into our matching systems,” Bickert wrote in a prepared statement.
Facebook also looks for “clusters” or related Pages, groups, posts, and profiles tied to the removed account. The social network is also improving efforts in keeping users previously removed from creating a new account.
Facebook has already added 3,000 people to the review team and this year will expand to a total of 20,000 people working to identify all content that violates the community standards, including extremist content. Another 180 people, Bickert said, are trained specifically in preventing terrorist content.
At the same time, Facebook is working to further “counterspeech,” or content that fights against extremism and other hateful posts.
“On terrorist content, our view is simple: There is no place on Facebook for terrorism,” Bickert said. “Our longstanding policies, which are posted on our site, make clear that we do not allow terrorists to have any presence on Facebook. Even if they are not posting content that would violate our policies, we remove their accounts as soon as we find them.”
Twitter’s director of Public Policy and Philanthropy, Carlos Monje Jr., said the platform has now suspended more than one million accounts for terrorism since mid-2015 — including 574,070 accounts just last year, a jump from the more than 67,000 suspensions in 2015. A big part of that increase is the technology used to detect those accounts, which caught one-third of the accounts in 2015 but is now responsible for 90 percent of the latest suspensions.
“While there is no ‘magic algorithm’ for identifying terrorist content on the internet, we have increasingly tapped technology in efforts to improve the effectiveness of our in-house proprietary anti-spam technology,” Monje said. “This technology supplements reports from our users and dramatically augments our ability to identify and remove violative content from Twitter.”
Extremist content was part of Twitter’s rule overhaul late last year prompted in part by #womenboycotttwitter. Those expanded rules went beyond Tweets to include handles, profile images and other profile information.
On a different note, the platform is also working to prevent election misinformation and will soon show users if they viewed that propaganda — along with donating money from those ads to conduct additional research. While Twitter has already shared updates designed specifically for political ads, verifying all state and federal candidates is part of those changes as well.
YouTube
Juniper Downs, YouTube’s director of Public Policy and Government Relations, said machine learning now removes 98 percent of “violent extremism” videos, up from 40 percent a year ago. Around 70 percent is removed within eight hours and half in under two, Downs said.
Along with the expanded software, YouTube has also added additional organizations to the Trusted Flagger program, including counter-terrorism groups. Within parent company Google itself, the number of staff working with those videos in violation will grow to 10,000 this year. This year will also bring a transparency report on flagged videos.
For videos that fall in a more gray area without an outright violation, YouTube has already announced these types of videos won’t receive monetary compensation or be part of the recommended videos, along with removing options for comments. Like Facebook, counter-speech is also part of the initiative, including the Creators for Change program.
“No single component can solve this problem in isolation,” Downs wrote in her prepared statement. “To get this right, we must all work together.”
Moving forward
While the session has been described as “mostly genial” with each platform reporting higher numbers of removed content and accounts, Clint Watts, a Robert A. Fellow for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, suggested that social networks can do more by reconsidering anonymous accounts and eliminating non-human bot accounts or requiring a CAPTCHA, while federal regulations for political ads should also be extended to social media.
“Social media companies realize the damage of these bad actors far too late,” Watts wrote in a prepared statement. “They race to implement policies to prevent the last information attack, but have yet to anticipate the next abuse of their social media platforms by emerging threats seeking to do bad things to good people.”
A video of the hearing is publicly available from the committee’s website, including prepared statements from each network.