We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jamari Perry a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jamari, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?
I truly believe that success is unique to every individual person. We all create our own rubric for success. For me, success takes consistency, hard work and a generous community and network. I remember realizing that my success could not be measured by anyone but myself as I began to grow and mature in my own career trajectory. Many times we look at everyone else’s road instead of focusing on our own journey. The destination will come but the journey is where the beautiful lessons lie.
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?
Jamari Perry is an Emmy Award winning filmmaker from the Bay Area, CA and graduated with a MFA in Film and Television Production at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in 2013. Jamari is currently working as founder and producer of a minority owned production company Hush Harbor Media.
Hush Harbor Media creates high quality digital content for non-profits and social justice organizations in order to amplify the work they are doing in their communities. This has been a through line in Jamari’s career as she strongly believes in bringing humanity to the forefront of storytelling.
Jamari is most proud of her greatest creation, her 3 year old son Makai who
keeps her plenty busy outside of running her company, teaching as an adjunct professor and freelance producing tv and film projects.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Resilience has been embedded in my DNA since the day I was born. My ancestors had to work hard to get to where they were and I watched my grandmother fight gentrification and predatory lenders in East Oakland. The reason I became a filmmaker is to fight injustice and be a voice for the voiceless and that’s what my business is about. Hush Harbor Media was founded to be a safe haven for people looking for good news about soldiers on the ground fighting against oppression, injustice and misinformation. It has taken resilience to do our work because our values and goals go beyond the typical digital media and branding company.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
A lesson we had to unlearn was low balling ourselves. In our approach with clients we would strive to be so competitive that we would not request the amount that it took for our quality of work. We learned that we needed to truly quote our worth so we could sustain our labor and provide the highest quality of content and turnaround for the required timeline. I like to be fair and generous but I had to realize that being fair has to go both ways in business. Now we are assessing our worth and charging a rate that makes sense for our clients and our business operations.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.hushharbormedia.com/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/hushharbormedia
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamariperry
- Twitter: @jperryfilms