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NET Critical Conversations: Young Entertainment Professionals: Learning from Young Leaders



The HPA Young Entertainment Professionals (YEP) program, incubated by the Women in Post committee in 2015, has blossomed in five short years from a fairly simple mentor structure to a high powered programming committee responsible for accelerating the careers of many of the industry’s brightest young stars.

How has the YEP program helped to provide new opportunities for YEPs’ careers and personal growth? What do industry newcomers need, and what can we learn from them? HPA NET Critical Conversations co-hosts Mark Chiolis and Kari Grubin talk to a panel of YEP alums about the industry and how to transition leadership to assure continued and future success as an inclusive and diverse global industry.


Jennifer Zeidan

Jennifer Zeidan (jZ) is a Senior Media Systems engineer at Netflix, focused on building editorial and post architecture, workflows, and support for the company’s studios and facilities. Prior to joining Netflix, jZ was a Media Systems Engineer at Industrial Light & Magic, leading editorial engineering and streamlining workflows and infrastructure design across multiple Lucasfilm divisions.

jZ also served on the HPA YEP committee as co-chair for three years, focusing her energies on building a resource and platform for mentorship, education, and community for young members of the media and entertainment industry.


Jesse Korosi

Jesse Korosi is the director of post at Sim, where he and his global workflow and development team have overseen the dailies/post production workflow on over 100 projects spanning the globe, collectively managing over 10 Petabytes of media, over the past 18 months.

Jesse was the former chair of the HPA YEP committee and is the current chair of ASC’s Advanced Data Management subcommittee, and he hosts HPA’s Through the Frame podcast. Aside from working on notable television shows and feature films, Jesse counts creating Sim’s client facing metadata aggregation/automated transcoding service Metabanq as his greatest achievement.


Adam Haracz

Adam Haracz is currently a post production manager at ABC, where he manages shows like Grey’s Anatomy and How to Get Away with Murder.

After graduating from Purdue University, Haracz worked as a production assistant and an assistant director before joining Discovery Communications as a network production coordinator, where he oversaw shows for TLC, Animal Planet and Discovery. He moved into post production when he joined ABC Studios as a post production coordinator. In his spare time Adam produces independent films and documentaries.


Michelle Diaz

Michelle Diaz has been at Pixelogic Media since 2017, working on Home Entertainment titles and digital distribution for the NBC Universal account, including titles such as Jordan Peele’s Us, Skyscraper, and Trolls World Tour. Diaz’s entertainment career began in the art department, followed by working as a project manager at an audio facility, where she learned how to be the liaison between the company’s internal teams and the client.

Her role at Pixelogic continues to grow, including serving on Pixelife, which is a social committee that works to build community within Pixelogic, and spearheading a diversity and inclusion council to make sure everyone feels welcomed and seen.


Jason Zukor

Currently a video engineer at Disney, Jason Zukor worked his way up through several of the major media companies in the LA area after graduating from Emerson College in 2010. His first full time job was with Technicolor as a Digital Media Operator, followed by working on the Universal backlot for their StudioPost facility, a role that led him into a lead operator role advising management on operational planning and developing workflows.

In April of 2019 after 8 years at StudioPost he moved on to work for Disney, where he manages content for multiple external and internal facing streaming apps such as Movies Anywhere, as well as providing his video expertise to a pair of full stack development teams as a tester and stakeholder to validate changes involving ingest and video playback. He is an alumnus of the YEP class of 2020.


Kari Grubin, HPA Board Member

Kari Grubin is a multi-talented executive who has spent the past 20 years leading and managing studio divisions, global post production facilities, corporate departments and groups within trade organizations. Most recently, she served as Vice President of Mastering for Studio Operations at The Walt Disney Studios, where she developed a long-term strategic vision for mastering across the title lifecycle. In that role, Kari served technical lead and key contributor for content specification development and master asset delivery for all distribution windows, resolving planning conflicts, version control and general performance in the area of mastering.

Kari serves on the board of HPA, where she is also the chair of Women in Post Committee and co-creator of the Young Entertainment Professionals Program (YEP). She is an active member of SMPTE and holds three US patents in media and entertainment technology as a co-inventor.


Mark Chiolis

Mark Chiolis, Director of Business Development, Mobile TV Group; HPA Board Member

Mark Chiolis is the Director of Business Development for Mobile TV Group (MTVG), which provides facilities for over 4,000 live professional and college sports events with more than 35 mobile units based throughout the U.S. MTVG has been leading the 4K/UHD/HDR live event production with key broadcasters, networks and distribution companies.

Mark is currently working to interface with customers and partners to develop and support MTVG’s entertainment, egames, and esports events with current and new trucks.

Prior to MTVG, Chiolis worked in marketing, business development, and sales for Grass Valley, Thomson, Technicolor, Philips, and BTS as well as at television stations KMUV, KRBK and KVIE.

Chiolis is an active board member of the HPA, an associate member of the American Society of Cinematographers, past section manager of SMPTE, member of STE, SBE and California Broadcasters Association.

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