After graduating with an undergraduate degree focused on
communication in 2004, I found myself working as a chef and living
across from UNM's Occupational Therapy school where my then girlfriend was pursuing a graduate degree. Realizing
that I needed direction, I went back to school and landed an internship
at the local PBS station in the Public Affairs department. For the
spring and fall semesters of 2005, I worked as an Associate Producer on
two weekly live shows: "In Focus" and "The Line." My
fellow intern, musician Jana Pochop, would come to be my first creative
muse as I learned what it meant to capture motion and tell stories with a
video camera.
INTERN
Jana and me in the first semester of our internship
The main job of an Associate Producer is research and pre-interviews of potential guests, which meant that we both spent a lot of time on the phone.
Second semester, post-Greenpeace work and travel over the summer
Of the three producers that we worked with during our two semester tenure, our favorite producer by far was a lovely lady named Tish Bravo. She had just graduated from Yale, but it was her work ethic and personality that took the station by storm. After leaving PBS Tish went on to work as a producer for National Geographic.
“Josh has an excellent sense of story. He has the ability to find the angle that will hook the audience in and then can develop the narrative to keep them interested. Josh worked for me on a weekly newsmagazine television show that had a demanding, unrelenting schedule. I could always rely on Josh to help book the very best guests, do comprehensive research on any assigned topic, and handle the surprise technical hiccups that often unfold during a live production. He’s a clear communicator and keeps a calm presence in the storm.”
-Tish Bravo, Story Producer and Writer at National Geographic Television