We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lena Pousette a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Lena thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Looking back on your career, have you ever worked with a great leader or boss? We’d love to hear about the experience and what you think made them such a great leader.

I did an acting job for an interactive game company and when they found out I was a writer they ended up hiring me to write an interactive film for them. It’s very different from writing linear but I enjoyed it immensely.

After that, David, my boss, asked me to work for them full time. It was a crazy, fun, exiting job and I learned more there than anywhere else I’ve worked. I designed games, wrote, produced and directed. David always pushed me to go further, try new things. He was super supportive and believed in me more than I believed in myself.

When he left for Warner Brothers Interactive, he asked me to “help” him by taking on Director of Development at WBI.

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?

My road to where I am now has been filled with adventures, obstacles and laughter. Although there have been difficult times I never felt I failed – you don’t fail unless you stop. Does a toddler fail to walk?

I began as an actor on stage, film, and TV (since early childhood in Sweden.) After a few years in Hollywood, I got tired of always being cast as a Russian spy, French mistress, Italian princess or Swedish nanny. I wanted to create characters I would never play, interesting relationships, different worlds and I wanted my creations to impact the audience on more levels than just being entertaining.

My best friend Brooks is an exceptional Emmy Award winning writer, and he was kind enough to teach me the ins and outs of screenwriting. We had some success together, but my curiosity brought me to the interactive world where I became a pioneer in interactive design, writing, producing, and directing. I worked as Director of Development for Time Warner Interactive and Philips POV as well as Creative Director for Mass Media.

Although I have a lot of passion for different artistic endeavors, I’ve always come back to writing. To create worlds, characters and stories, constantly asking myself; What IF? This mental and imaginative exercise keeps my energy buzzing and my creativity leaping.

I want to keep my audience on the edge of their seats, exhausting them as the resolve finally arrives… and then I want them to ask themselves questions… What are we doing here? Where’s our compassion? Do we think things through before we jump into new technology? Who are we forgetting?

My scripts have dealt with subjects like homelessness, the morbid fascination of slaughtering exotic animals for that selfie, human trafficking, black market organ harvesting and edgy tech.

What am I most proud of? Like Churchill, I “never give in. Never, never, never, never.”

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

My mother was an anesthesiologist, my father an engineer, my sisters a nurse and a GP respectively, my brother also became an engineer, but I wanted to experience it all, try jobs, sports, travel, dance, play instruments, learn magic, explore different creative endeavors. I didn’t want to fit into a box.

I yearned for EXPERIENCES! And I get to write about them. Weave together stories, touch others with my storytelling, make them laugh and scare them. I’d like my work to have an impact after the screen goes dark, or all the pages turned. I’ve always treasured stories that make me think and question. I strive to follow that path.

And I feel incredibly fortunate.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I fell in love and married a man who turned out to be abusive and controlling and he didn’t want me to be involved with the entertainment industry. I was scared of him so I backed away from almost everyone in the industry. But I never stopped writing. At night I’d do research and work on my computer. During those years I finished two screenplays. To escape the abuse, I left him and was homeless with my two children for 4 and ½ months. We had nothing but what we were wearing, no phones, computers, nothing.

We stayed with different friends, it was difficult to just get my children to school, help them with homework, feed them and do laundry. During that time, I jotted notes in a journal since I’d lost my computer (and those two screenplays,) but I never stopped writing. Later I wrote for the “CPTSD foundation” about my experience in hopes of helping others in similar situations.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lenapousette.com/
• Instagram: @lenapousette
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lenapousette/
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0693862/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

Image Credits

Photos 1 and 2: Brooks Wachtel Photo 4 Paul Wellman