Interactive production coordinator
Fred Rogers Productions, Pittsburgh
Age: 25
In three words: “Organized, proactive, helpful”
What colleagues say: Ana helps coordinate production with our interactive producers across four of our public media series: Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Alma’s Way, Donkey Hodie and Odd Squad. Her insights have been instrumental in the development and release of interactive games across the series. She does an amazing job coordinating communication and facilitating asset management between developers, the show teams and PBS Kids. She also provides valuable feedback by running playtests with the local community and using insights she has gained as she completes Drexel University’s master’s program in digital media. She’s also been a constant advocate for increasing our Spanish interactive content and is directly involved in evaluating our interactive content offerings in Spanish. She is very passionate about children’s media and how interactive experiences can help children’s lives.
What Ana says
Decision to work in public media: As a COVID graduate, I entered the workforce at a tumultuous time, uncertain about what would come next. A former professor shared that Fred Rogers Productions was hiring. I recall reading the job description and thinking, “Yes, I can absolutely do this!” The best part was that the mission and vision were so aligned with what I wanted to contribute to the world and who I am culturally. As a proud Puerto Rican, I’m acutely aware of the ebbs and flows of our representation. Being able to personally contribute to that representation through the Alma’s Way video games is indescribably fulfilling and motivating.
Key accomplishments: When I was hired, we had released two games in Spanish. Now, we have nine, with many more on the way! I can’t take credit for this in its entirety, but I can speak to the team effort I coordinated with advisors, translators, developers and fellow production team members. Thanks to this language accessibility effort, our games have been played roughly over 4 million times in Spanish.
Inspired by: The very community that we serve: children! Each child brings a unique perspective to each of our games, making every opportunity to playtest with them a goldmine for new ideas.
Advice for young public media professionals: Surround yourself with mentors — people who do the type of work that you want to do in five to 10 years, people who will push you to do better.
Advice for public media leaders: Digital games, apps and websites require maintenance, just like physical resources. Technology evolves at an exceptional pace, making software from just a few years ago potentially incompatible with current devices. Old digital resources can lead to poor user experiences, negative reviews and a missed opportunity to engage with people in your communities. I urge you to take action now. The longer you wait, the more expensive it becomes.
Funniest thing that’s happened on the job: When there are visual bugs in unfinished games, there’s something absurdly funny about seeing our beloved characters have two faces, three arms or any other number of visual errors. Usually, I’m hunting these down, pushing all of the buttons in the wrong order to make it happen. It’s all part of the process for making good games.