Career Chat: Careers in Film & Media Production with Shannon Malone-deBenedictis

The event is open to all current UMD students.

About the speaker:

I grew up loving movies and TV and anything creative. I wrote my first play at age 10 and have executive-produced documentaries for Disney+, Netflix, and others. I’ve always loved telling stories and finding ways to express my creativity.

At the beginning of my career, my goal was to work in museum art and curation, but life had other plans (as it usually does). I moved back to the DC area to take care of my mom, and it was a college friend who remembered I was a really good editor and asked me to join Discovery on the midnight shift, cutting up shows. That was 25 years ago. 

While at Discovery, I rose through the ranks, starting as editor, then a preditor, then I became a producer and went to the network side. I worked with Executive Producers on everything ranging from Shark Week to Planet Earth to Discovery Atlas.

After Discovery, I moved to Nat Geo as a Supervisory Producer and eventually made my way to development, which ended up being a perfect mix of my background: sales, relationship building, and production experience. 

After 4 years in network development, I joined the small team at Red Rock Films, an independent production company, focused on everything from natural history to science to lifestyle and independent documentaries. By the time I left, we had won the prime-time Emmy for Secrets of the Whales and a daytime Emmy for Penguin Town. Go team! 

I currently run my own creative consulting company, Padlin Creative. My clients range from start-ups ready to break into the film market to billion-dollar tech companies seeking creative solutions to everyday problems.