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

Kristen, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about the best boss, mentor, or leader you’ve ever worked with.

It was a rough go when I first started at Citrus College. I felt misunderstood, was untrained and had vastly different strengths and experiences than my predecessor. In fact at one point was told that I may not make it through the year probation by my current supervisor.  Two years into this experience and I became blessed with a new Dean, John Vaughan. He immediately showed me that he understood where my gifts lie. He encouraged me and impowered me to expand on them. He’s been an incredible mentor as a manager, but also as an artist and person. Because of his guidance, I have grown as a manager, an artist, and as a person.

Kristen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have always been a performer…an incredibly introverted performer. As a child in a small town in Pennsylvania, I was always singing and I began to play French Horn in fifth grade. In high school I found my bravery and began to audition for musicals and show choir, which is where I blossomed. As a senior, I audition for and got into a group out of Corona, California, called The Young Americans. After graduation, I bravely moved to California to join the performance group to sing and dance my way across the entire country with their National Music Outreach Tours. I even performed in Vegas before leaving to pursue my education at Buffalo State College in Buffalo, NY.

I was a performing arts major studying acting, voice performance, and dance, while working in the box office at Rockwell Hall Performing Arts Center at the college. I recall at the time that the Director of the PAC really encouraged me to think about being an Arts Administrator, but at that time, I thought he was nuts. I was going to be a professional actor. But I eventually ran for president of  the student run organization, Casting Hall, which was just a further push for me into Arts Administration.

After graduating, I got my first full-time job working at a law firm as a secretary. Then did some soul searching by teaching acting at a summer camp, which somehow led me to a short stint in Florida, where I performed a little, and finally got myself back to California where I felt I belonged. There, I got a job in the mailroom at the talent agency, APA. I thought this would be where I’d make the connections to get my acting career going. It wasn’t. But I did learn incredibly valuable lessons.

The agency world wasn’t for me.  So I got a job working at a private school in the theatre. I worked hard as an event planner, stage manager…essentially an arts administrator. With no room for growth, I decided to get my masters degree in, you guessed it, arts administration from SCAD University. This ultimately changed my life and path drastically.

I got the position at Citrus College in October of 2015. I began to use the skills and knowledge from my masters degree immediately. Part of my duties was booking our incredible ensembles (using my experience from the agency world), which requires a lot of marketing. Our division website was in dire need of an update and we had no digital presence. Though I was not asked to brand the division, I felt that it was the only way to put Citrus College Visual and Performing Arts on the map. Eventually, I got a supervisor, a Dean, that saw my strengths in this area and let me fly.

8 years later, and we have two gorgeous websites full color brochures, very active and successful social media channels, and student enrollment continues to grow in our division, due, in part, to my efforts.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

As I mentioned, I made it into The Young Americans at 18 years old. Instead of going to college, like all of my friends, I chose to pack up and move 3000 miles away, to join this performance group. I didn’t know how to balance a check book, had never lived on my own, and immediately had to make a living, pay rent, and figure out what adulting was.

We didn’t get paid in The Young Americans, so those of us from other states had to have part time jobs to pay rent. If we were lucky enough to get on a tour, we had to either have enough saved to pay rent for 3 months, or temporarily move out and find another place to live when we returned, which was my case. We also had to quit our jobs and find a new one when we returned from tour. In my two and a half years in the group, I moved 4 times, and had at least 20 different roommates. I was lucky enough to work at Marie Callendars, who would take me back when I returned from tour, but some folks had to find a new job each time. I didn’t come from money and was not supported financially by my parents.

Just as a reminder, I was only 20 years old when I left the group and moved back home to go to college. In some ways, this is why I relate to so many of my students. At a community college, students are often on their own or are not financially supported by their parents. I understand their needs and mentor them and guide them with my experiences.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I was doing really well at APA Talent Agency. I moved up from the mailroom to a desk within 2 months, and within a couple of years was on track to be promoted to Agent. I was covering my own networks and trusted by clients and casting agents. But I still wanted to be an actor.

I began having discussions with the senior agents about what was needed for me to be successful as an agent. Turned off completely by the sexism and misogyny that I was witnessing, and determined to be the person who represented incredible talent over incredible looks, I learned that the road of my choice would be all uphill…in the snow. I was told that putting as many “hot” men and women in front of the casting directors was simply an easier choice than finding the talented actors, not generally cast in leading roles, like Melissa McCarthy, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Willem Dafoe.

This realization about the business not only turned me off from being an agent, but it turned me off from ever wanting to pursue acting in this town. To be honest, I never even tried auditioning in LA. The agency business made me despise that world and completely changed my perspective on where I belonged.  So I pivoted to arts administration and education and never looked back.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.citrusarts.org
• Instagram: @citrus_arts
• Facebook: @citrusvpa
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/knhumbert/
• Other: www.citrusartsproductions.org

Image Credits
Maroon Assaf, Charles Joyce, Shawna Louise, Kimberly Tyron, Kristen Campbell