Dial House

Well, just as I have found a new amazing mentor to sink my teeth into (Cameron Maddux, Director of Account Planning at the Academy), he has found greener pastures at an amazing creative think-tank called Dial House in the SOMA of SF. A kind of rock-n-roll, buck-the-system consortium of deep thinkers that work on figuring out ways to define, strategize, communicate, and otherwise better existing brands, it is a great fit for Cameron. Sigh.

So being the awesome educator that he is, Cameron hosted a little after-hours soiree last Friday night at Dial House to kind of talk to Academy of Art planning people about where we can go from here and just to kind of say, "I am still here for you guys." Like I said, great educator; total sweetheart.

It was at Dial House that I met the much buzzed about Charlie Kouns (former Director of Planning at the Academy (AAU)). I was delighted to find Charlie to be a warm, imaginative Southerner with a love of stories and young people. I am looking forward to get to know him better.

In fact, Charlie and I got to talking about this project he is working on called Imagine Learning, designed to make education relevant to kids and what they need in today's world. I am so excited about it. This will be where my volunteer efforts will now be directed (ha! You didn't think I forgot about my vow of reformation, did you?). For those of you who don't know I have a pretty extensive background in child psych. and education.

I was also pleased to meet other young planners at Dial House. The conversations were interesting and humorous, and it was obvious that most of the people there had a good breadth of experiences and thinking. I may have found home. Hurray!