9 Questions With Amber Samdahl

Describe what you currently do, and tell us the best thing about it.

I'm the Director of Design & Innovation at PBS Wisconsin, where I oversee our design, digital, and emerging media work, which spans animation, motion graphics, graphic design, scenic design, interactive design, and our website and digital distribution.

The work closest to my heart is our interactive media work, which I started from the ground up since joining PBS Wisconsin. We started with 360° virtual tours, moved into VR experiences and interactive stories, and most recently launched our first narrative video game made in collaboration with the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. I came to this work after 14 years at Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI), where I started in the research and development lab and eventually became an Executive Creative Director building interactive experiences for the Disney Parks worldwide.

What I love most about both of these jobs comes down to the people. At WDI, I got to work alongside some of the most creatively and technically gifted people in the world, representing every discipline imaginable and all pushing each other to succeed. At PBS, it’s a whole world of people who lead with their hearts and who care deeply about elevating the voices of communities that don't always get heard. I have been so lucky!

What led you to the ETC?

I was an undergrad who couldn't find a field that was exactly right. I earned degrees in Computer Science and Communication Arts/Film, but never quite felt I belonged in either. In my Communication Arts classes I was the technical person in the room, and in my CS classes I was the creative one wanting to use programming to create experiences. I didn't know it at the time, but I was looking for a place that lived in the space between those two things. When I found the ETC, it felt like a place for people like me: multidisciplinary, curious, creative and technical at once, never fitting neatly into a box. I finally found my people.

What projects did you work on at the ETC?

Both of the ETC projects I worked on were for Give Kids the World Village, a truly special organization that hosts children with critical illnesses and their families for free week-long stays near Orlando, Florida.

For my first project, our team created a short animation that plays before their Saturday night movies. My second project was building a themed interactive experience around their star fairy tradition, in which every child who visits the village writes their name on a gold star that is then hung on the ceiling of the village castle. We built a themed physical installation where kids could drop off their star, and through lights, music, and animation the star fairy would come to collect it for the night sky.

What’s your favorite ETC memory?

Two things come to mind. The first was the tradition where one of our professors, Jesse Schell, would take all the first-year students outside to teach us how to juggle. It was such a delightfully goofy thing and the kind of moment that only happens somewhere like the ETC.

The other memory that stands out is visiting Give Kids the World Village. Give Kids the World is the most fiercely joyful place I've ever experienced. Watching kids go through our star fairy experience, seeing their faces, and feeling like we'd contributed even something tiny to the magic of that place — that's a memory I'll carry for the rest of my life.

How did ETC prepare you for your career, and what impact has it had on your life?

The most valuable thing the ETC gave me was a genuine appreciation for collaboration as a skill. Through our team projects, the ETC taught us how to work and communicate across disciplines. No class had graded me on that since kindergarten, but it turned out to matter more than almost anything else. Those skills paid off immediately in my career, and honestly, they're still what I rely on most.

The other impact was even bigger: the ETC put the WDI opportunity in front of me and landing that job changed everything. I moved to Los Angeles, spent 14 years in an extraordinary job, met my husband, and started my family. Enough said!

What is the most interesting or enjoyable thing that you’ve gotten to do in your career so far?

There are so many wild stories from my years at Walt Disney Imagineering's R&D department. I once went out to the desert in the middle of the night to watch a dragon fly. I traveled to Sweden to live on a decommissioned battleship as part of a location-based roleplay research experience. I stayed overnight at Skywalker Ranch, surrounded by Lucasfilm history. I visited Pixar regularly and got to meet and collaborate with people whose work I'd admired since I was a kid dreaming of working there. I still can’t believe that that was my job!

What advice would you give current students?

Lean into working with other people. I know that sounds obvious, but at this stage of your education, success has largely been about individual achievement: what you know, what you can build, what grade you get. That’s all about to change in the job world, and the ETC is one of the few places that teaches collaboration and communication as skills worth developing in their own right. That will differentiate you more than almost anything else once you're actually in the workforce. Hard skills can be taught on the job. The ability to work well with people who think differently than you — that's much more valuable than most people realize when they're still in school.

Describe the ETC in one word.

Catalyst.

What are you working on now that excites you?

At PBS, I'm thinking a lot about what the next era of public media looks like and specifically about the role that games can play in it. We just launched our first narrative video game at PBS Wisconsin, and I think there's something genuinely interesting in the intersection of games, community storytelling and public service. Public media is in a unique position to do that kind of work in a way that commercial studios can't, and figuring out what that looks like is what I’m excited to tackle next.