Tracy Bacenas is an Emmy-nominated editor, director, writer, artist and supermom who infuses story throughout her work and her life. In this episode, we follow the first half of her career, as she shares tips and insights from the work that has made her one of the world’s top storytellers.

We start out with the tale of one of her first assignments as a young TV journalist sent to cover a KKK rally in her home state of Georgia. Things don’t go so well, and she learns some valuable lessons about perspective, bias and when to keep your head down.

After spending the next decade honing her craft making films and videos for art and corporate clients, she heads to art school to explore different genres and media for her story work. This culminates in the production of an incredibly avant-garde art project, in which she combines video episodes of future stories and online dating as a way to design her life. Decades ahead of her time, this work nicely foreshadowing today’s emerging practices of using speculative and design fiction as a way to develop and test new ideas for innovators and entrepreneurs.

Inevitably, her career takes her to Hollywood, where she becomes a top editor for Survivor. As we talk about the high stakes challenges of working at this level, Tracy takes us behind the scenes into the edit suite to reveal the secrets of crafting compelling stories.

Wrapping up, we realize that we have so much to talk about that we decide to continue our conversation in another episode. So be sure to catch Tracy Bacenas – Part Two!

***
If you like this episode, please subscribe, like and share it with your networks.

And if you want more great content like this to help you share knowledge, get support and grow your audience, join me on The Q.west for Good.