"I feel the biggest mistake people my age are making is charging down career or life paths without careful consideration of their personal ambitions, happiness, and potential legacies. They hear talk of good money or stability, and barrel forward near blindly, hoping they'll be happy in the lives they end up with.
This is why so many millennials are looking at themselves when they're 30 and finding themselves unhappy. They've climbed to the top of mountains they didn't want to stand on.
SPICES, on the other hand, moves away from this trap. The platform begins with an analysis of the heart and soul of your personal ambition, and ends with giving you the strategies you need to achieve a life you most desire.
For me, the strategies I most connected with were evaluating the internal motivations for my ambitions, finding and analyzing the activities that made me the most happy, and learning how to effectively lead and relate to others.
How do I know the SPICES platform works? I'm one of its early benefiters.
When I was 6, I identified my personal ambition to be a filmmaker. I knew that the purpose of my life was to entertain and challenge people through cinema.
I had several people, teachers and parents, tell me that becoming a filmmaker would lead to stress and financial difficulty. I was told to avoid the route completely and choose stabler careers like engineering or computer science. At 14, I almost considered giving up on my ambition and agreeing with many of these adults around me who told me to give up. Why would they lie, after all?
"SPICES helped me identify the motivations that mattered most and align my life around them. Those insights helped me earn a full scholarship to USC Film School, lead large creative teams, and build a career doing what I love."
Through SPICES, I gained the courage to follow an atypical life path, and through the teachings of the program, was able to harness my personal strengths to make a film career happen for myself. I have no formal ties to the film industry. My Dad is a dishwasher, my mother is a homemaker.
After learning from the SPICES platform, I decided to start a drama class in my high school's lackluster educational curriculum. I wanted to bring my love of performance, storytelling, and entertainment to my community.
This action got the attention of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and after applying, I was accepted to attend its film school (top ranked in the world) on full scholarship.
AT USC, I went through 4 years of intense production curriculum, entrusting that my love of impacting people through art and adoration of the film medium would pull through. The teachings I learned from SPICES were with me every step of the way.
From SPICES, I learned how to identify my internal motivations. I then communicated those motivations—of impacting people through cinema—to investors to fund my projects throughout school (and even now).
I used the various leadership and people skills I learned through SPICES to lead crews of upwards to 30 people to achieve my visions.
Through careful identification of my personal happiness and life satisfaction, I’ve been able to guide myself into projects and opportunities that have presented me with a chance to impact the community through my work. SPICES was my compass in all of this.
Since graduating from USC's Film School in 2018, I have worked for Fox Sports West, Los Angeles Metro, The National Association for Latinx Independent Producers, Fine Brothers Entertainment, The Shoah Foundation, and countless other organizations and companies. I've sound designed several shorts and a feature film, and acted as cinematographer on 3 independent feature films and several shorts and music videos.
My personal directorial work, largely in documentary, has been shown in festivals around the country, and I'm privileged to say that I now making a living doing what I love in a career field I want to be in.
And I'm just getting started.
I live to entertain and provoke thought in people through my art. SPICES helped me realize that, and it helped make that into a reality."
