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

Irene, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

I’ve always dreamed very big and wanted to work in the entertainment industry. I remember I would drive down the 101 on the way 626 from the 818 on the weekends with my family and we would pass by the big Universal building and I remember I told my dad, “Dad, one day I’m going to work in that building.” I never thought it would be easy but that was the beginning of manifesting my career. I’ve always been very picky and dead set on the things that I wanted. I knew I couldn’t do anything but work in the entertainment industry… it was a feeling I had to follow.

I followed what I was supposed to do, go to school, get a degree and then find a job. I had zero connections to the entertainment industry, being super sheltered growing up in the San Fernando Valley, and then going to school at UC Irvine where the people I met could care less about pop culture.

My journey was a little crazy and it’s been over 10 years ago now, but the first real job that I got in entertainment was PMK*BNC as a talent assistant and it was horrible. Every single small mistake I made I was yelled at and berated for. If you googled my old boss, you would find articles of them being “the meanest publicist in Hollywood.” It was like real life Devil Wears Prada, except there was no glowing recommendation at the end of this job. I made the decison that maybe entertainment was too big for me and I just wasn’t going to make it. So I quit while crying my eyes out to HR. I’ve never quit anything in my life and I felt like such an embarassing failure. The HR person was so nice to me and asked me “hey would you still want to work in entertainment? I can promise you, it’s not like this anywhere else.” I was very untrusting at this point but yes of course it was my dream. He was so kind and told me to send him my resume and he would post in this HR Entertainment professional group he was in on Linkedin.

So I sent him my resume, he posted it, and I started getting a ton of calls and temp jobs. My dream of working in entertainment was coming back to life again. After taking some temp roles, I was hit with a fork in the road where I had a full time offer to be a receptionist at Original Productions with benefits or I had an opportunity to work at NBC as a temp on a desk because someone was called into Jury Duty and it wasn’t confirmed if she would get picked up or if I’d just be there for a day. It was my dream to work in the Universal building so I turned down the full time offer and took the temp position. I was placed in the digital marketing department at NBC. To my luck, the person I was covering for did get picked up for Jury Duty for a full week so my assignment on her desk was extended.

While working in the digital marketing department I worked with a page who was so kind to me after everything I’ve been through. She was the first real friend I met in the industry. She told me her boyfriend at the time was leaving his desk for page rotation in alternative developement (which is reality TV). I had no idea what any of this meant but I saw an opportunity and had to take a chance. The job was a 3-month probationary period with potential to full time hire.

I ended up getting the full-time position and met some coworking friends who I still keep in touch with to this day. And that all kickstarted my career in entertainment. If I never took that risk of a temp role over a full time offer early on, I don’t know where I would have ended up today.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

For my day job, I work in entertainment marketing. During the pandemic, COVID made the entertainment business a very unstable place to work. So since I was locked up inside working from home for over 6 months, I needed a creative outlet being isolated from people and work. I felt like my entire identity was questioned. My roommates encouraged me to make videos on YouTube and Tiktok. My content was not good, but it was something I could do and create. It kept me inspired and I had fun with it.

It wasn’t really until I got my job at Netflix where my first project was a korean drama called Squid Game. We built a pop-up in Koreatown. I loved that the company was authentic to the culture. I grew up watching Korean dramas and dreamed of working on a massive AAPI project in entertainment and it was happening in my reality. I made a tiktok for fun of the event and it was my first viral video and even got picked up on bustle: https://www.bustle.com/entertainment/real-life-squid-game-promo-stunts?utm_campaign=linkinbio&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=later-linkinbio. That was the craziest feeling ever. It felt like the dream I wanted to live was happening and everything I was doing, all the decisions I’ve made were right. Everything felt so right and so good.

So since then I’ve continued creating videos on the internet and it’s been a very fun side gig. And I continue bringing my creativity to my day job.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

The pandemic. I switched gears from working at Marvel Entertainment and pivoted to luxury beauty and ecommerce at Guthy-Renker where I worked as the Amazon brand channel manager working on media buy plans with Amazon, overseeing supply and inventory, and managing the creative for our product pages. I worked with graphic designers, our creative team, and played around with the Amazon shop templates myelf to provide the most helpful shopping experience for consumers.
I learned a lot about the beauty industry and was content with my job but I wanted more. I missed entertainment. I missed being in person and the craziness of the industry. The energy is different in entertainment. It’s more alive.
After exactly 1 year, a recruiter reached out to me on Linkedin and asked me if I wanted to work at Netflix. I loved the people I interviewed with so I took the job. I think I appreciate my job more now because I made a pivot into something else and that confirmed for me that entertainment is what I want. Entertainment just feels like home to me. It feels right.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding feeling really is creating something, putting it out into the ether, and getting a reaction. The stronger the reaction, the better the creative. I love reading comments and seeing what worked and what didn’t work. I always want to grow and improve and being creative is so much fun. But, the best is when you put something out knowing and anticipating the reaction you’re going to get because you had this idea in your head, and then it happens because you brought it to life. I think that’s magical.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.instagram.com/stirtheyummy/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/irenewu/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@stirtheyummy
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=k4cJzyEa7HypFsQUzNbMHg
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@irenehwu