Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Diane Vierra. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Diane, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?

When I worked in IL as a nanny, I worked with a family that chose not to put boundaries on their youngest daughters. You could say they allowed them to be “the boss”, in all but name. These girls were very used to getting everything they wanted without much pushback at all, and the longer I spent time with them, the more I found myself putting space between myself and the girls. Boundaries were something that I had struggled to maintain in my personal life for years, but at the time of this job, it got to a point where I felt the need to step up as the caretaker and put my foot down, if you will. It was an emotionally charged moment, but I made it clear that those girls couldn’t keep treating everyone in their lives in that way. If they did, less and less people would want to play with them. Additionally, I ended up telling the mother, my former boss, similar things when she attempted to relieve me of the job in a very unprofessional manner. She didn’t make those girls a priority and as a result, they bossed around everyone in the house and had no respect, not for me or even for their family members. To summarize, that job pushed me to recognize my own boundaries as a caretaker and a leader, and to have the confidence to execute them.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve been taking care of kids since I was 14 years old. When I lived in IL, my mom held an at-home daycare in her house, I became her assistant. We would take care of kids from 6 months old to 6 years old, with 3 to 6 kids in the house each week. Since then, I’ve spent the last 15 years working with kids as a private music teacher, a babysitter, a nanny and as an after-school program leader. On the creative side, I’ve spent many years creating different kinds of art, from music to writing and more recently to visual art by playing around with mixed media styles. I’ve also studied a little theater in college and acted in a few productions. However, the thing those arts all have in common is storytelling and telling stories to kids has been my passion for a long time. Currently, my dream is to bring those skills, experiences and passions into the world of immersive theater.
I found out about immersive theater for the first time in 2019, when I lived in SC, and it fascinated me. In this kind of theater, the fourth wall disappears, and you get to walk inside the world of that show, interact with the characters and even help move the story forward. Therefore, my goal in the next few years is to create and produce an immersive theater production designed to educate and inspire kids.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Since I was a teenager, I have loved telling stories to kids and seeing how these stories spark a passion for life inside them. It reminded of the power of a tale that’s well told, and when it comes a story for children, it ought to be well crafted and well loved. A big goal of mine is to use the art of immersive theater and experiences to inspire and educate kids in unique ways.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I had studied music when I was in college, and my education has been heavily focused on music even before that. Specifically, I studied the drums and percussion. It had been an obvious skill for me since I was 13 years old, but even though I was good at it, it wasn’t my life. Being a musician wasn’t how I really wanted to spend my life. As much as I enjoyed playing music, I earnestly enjoyed working with kids more.

To be clear, I wasn’t passionate about the traditional school setting. That wasn’t it for me. I enjoyed working in more interactive spaces when it came to educating kids, such as when I worked in a children’s museum in the Atlanta area. We got to teach them about science, art and stories in a way that was more hands-on and they got to learn through experience, rather than through lectures. I loved telling them stories and creating things with them, and that was more of what I wanted my life to look like.