MY SHERO ... THERESE
BY: Michael A. Aun, FIC, LUTCF, CSP, CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame
One of the many "sheroes" in my life is my sister Therese…
Therese, better known as "Tree" to her siblings, is one of the neatest people you'll ever meet. And many of my readers unknowingly have met her, albeit indirectly vis-ŕ-vis her work. If you've ever watched CNN, chances are you've caught some of the work Tree has produced.
Like my older sister Mary, Tree was Miss DAR at Lexington and was Student Body Prez. She was the very first graduate from the University of South Carolina to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree back in the early eighties, a brand new degree at the time.
Like many of her brothers and sisters, Tree had an affinity for the stage and the arts. She worked as a puppeteer for ten years with the Atlanta Center for Puppetry Arts, building and designing puppets for scores of stage plays. She also acted in numerous children and adult productions and directed her own adult puppetry production, an adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper."
Tree climbed on board with CNN in 1991 at the onset of the first Gulf War and has been with them since. She labored in the vineyards as a Production Supervisor and as a Coordinating Producer for CNN NewsStand.
In 2000, she joined the CNN Marketing and On-Air Promotion team as a writer/producer, directing, producing and managing the promotions of shows including the teams that work on the pieces.
Essentially, Tree and her team make the commercials for CNN to promote their productions be they television, on-line (CNN.com), audio-casts and now pod-casts. As new technologies are added to the mix, Tree's gang will adapt and adopt them into the process.
Her internal clients include "American Morning" (CNN's flagship morning show), "Anderson Cooper 360" and specials such as "God's Warriors," "Planet In Peril" and "CNN=Politics" campaigns.
Little sis is part of an award winning team that has garnered numerous industry honors including the 2006 Promax/BDA Conference, the industry's most important gathering for promotional and marketing executives in electronic media, winning 15 Gold Medals, five Silver Medals and four Bronze Medals. Her team worked on projects that won four of the six awards for North America.
One of Tree's proudest accomplishments was producing (literally overnight) The Public Service Announcement - "Katrina", which won in category (GOLD) and (BEST IN NATION). It can be viewed at http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/katrina/help.center/ (Watch "Better Days" helps relief effort.)
There is a story behind the Public Service Announcement. The song on the piece, "Better Days," was a new song by the group, the Goo Goo Dolls. They actually provided the song gratis to CNN so that CNN could create a PSA to encourage people to give time and money for Katrina victims. Therese took the song and found the images that fit (which is what a producer does), so that the music and the lyrics would provide a story for the viewers. The Goo Goo Dolls are recording artists signed with Warner Brothers, a division of Time Warner, the parent company for CNN.
Recently, Tree learned of a new promotion to Director of Campaign Development, a first ever position of its kind for CNN, focusing on development of top-priority campaigns, aligning and coordinating communication strategy across all marketing and promotion assets at CNN.
So when I say how proud I am of my little sister Therese, make no mistake… I am. I also have another sister, Frances, who works at CNN in New York. More on Fran in the future. Good to see that at least the girls in our family found their way to the big city for a little fame. They are my sheroes!