From founding hire to department supervisor, ending in a satellite-office launch in India.

First hire in the compositing department at Gener8 Vancouver. No team, no workflows, no template. The studio was growing, and compositing capability had to be built before it was needed.

I built the operating system: compositing workflows from the ground up (start to client delivery), quality check and feedback mechanisms, and department daily stand-ups. Asset tracking was a leadership team effort, designed in partnership with Dev and Engineering.

As the team grew, I also took on the people-leadership work: hiring, performance reviews, PIPs, raises, and promotions across the department. At department height, the function ran with six leads reporting in. Training was built into the operational role, not separate from it.

• Department buildWorkflows (start to client delivery), quality check and feedback mechanisms, daily stand-ups, training pipeline and materials for incoming artists.
• Cross-functionalPartnered with Dev and Engineering on asset tracking architecture and project process.
• People leadershipDepartment hiring, performance management, PIPs, raises, and promotion decisions. Six leads at department height.

The training function and the operational function were the same function. I built both because the department needed both.

As the volume of work grew faster than internal headcount could absorb, the department had to extend. Outsource vendors became part of the delivery system, and the operational model had to expand with them.

I built the workflow infrastructure for external vendors: QC standards, performance metrics, export pipelines, and clean feedback loops. At peak, 15 vendors ran in concurrent evaluation, 15 to 40 artists each, with vendor testing as its own tracked system running alongside active production.

This was not just delegation. It was building a system where the internal team and the external partners operated under the same standard, with the same expectations, and the same accountability.

• Vendor evaluationUp to 15 outsource vendors in concurrent evaluation. Average team size: 15–40 artists per vendor. Built tracking and QC infrastructure parallel to production systems.
• QC & metricsEstablished measurement framework and quality standards for vendor deliverables.
• Feedback loopsBuilt the operational system for getting vendor work back into the internal pipeline cleanly.

Multi-vendor coordination is a different competency than internal team leadership. I learned it here, and ran it again at CEA and Think Tank.

The role shifted in Act Three. Less hands-on compositing, more executive and administrative work: department-level decisions, the lead-up to a satellite launch in India, and operational continuity through ownership change.

Just before the India deployment, Gener8 was acquired by Prime Focus. My reporting structure and the Vancouver team's reporting structure stayed steady. Operational continuity ran from below while the corporate change happened above.

Then I flew to Mumbai. The studio needed to go from a small starting team to 200+ artists on active production work in 7 weeks. The training and onboarding infrastructure did not yet exist there.

I deployed on-site for 7 weeks to stand it up: the department training pipeline, new department leads onboarded, and the operational standards Vancouver expected. I also interviewed and hired artists across all departments, not just my own, with the India leads reporting to me through the launch window.

Compositing and paint training cohort. Week 3 milestone. Gener8 India, 2015.

Capability had to ramp faster than headcount, with staff hired against active shows rather than ahead of them. And it had to lead across language, two time zones a half-day apart, and a team adjusting to a new corporate parent. The pipeline had to translate, not just transfer.

• India launch7 weeks on-site. Stood up training and onboarding infrastructure from zero.
• Scale delivered50 → 200+ artists on the production floor within the 7-week window.
• Operational continuityHeld the team and the systems steady through acquisition and geographic expansion. Reporting structures stayed steady.
• Cross-cultural leadershipBuilt communication norms and operational alignment across Vancouver and Mumbai, across a 12-hour time difference, language, and a moment of corporate change.

Training is upstream of change management. When you build capability, you earn the credibility to lead the change that follows.