Black Stories/23: Jessica Fernandez

Jessica Fernandez is the Head of Technology Communications for Amazon Studios, and also leads internal communications for the broader Studios organization. Jessica is responsible for developing communication strategies that create delightful journeys between people and technology. She works in partnership with Amazon Studio leaders to engage and connect employees, production partners, and industry audiences, to the Studios’ vision. These strategies include internal publications, media outreach, conferences, and product launches for the Studio and the Technology organization.

Prior to joining Amazon Studios, Jessica created award-winning technology comms and cybersecurity programs for Warner Bros. and Discovery, and has over 15 years of experience in Media and Entertainment and Corporate Communications. Jessica graduated from Mount St. Mary’s College with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business and Marketing.

• Full Episode Transcript
• Jessica Fernandez
• I feel like the people who focus, if you really look around, the people who focus on the external and have something else that they absolutely love, if it's biking, hiking, climbing, whatever, or if it's a side hustle or business, those are the people who are usually vibrating higher and a bit happier at work because it doesn't matter as much.
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• Justin James Lopez
• Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Amazon's Black Stories, where we highlight the stories of Black designers, researchers, and creative minds from all around the world. I'm your host, Justin James Lopez, and today I'm joined by Jessica Fernandez where we talk about communication, design, rethinking the idea of mentorship and how it impacts our growth, and finding time for your personal passions. Let's hear our story. Well, Jessica, thanks again for joining us on this episode of Amazon Black Stories. I wanted to just start with just learning more about who you are and what you do right now.
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• Jessica Fernandez
• So very happy to be here. I'm excited for this podcast. My name is Jessica Fernandez. I head up communications, both internal communications and communications for technology. So I have a little bit of a duo role. I'm owning both internal engagement for employees across Amazon Studios and also creating stories and storytelling for our technology teams. So that's really telling the story for the innovation that is happening behind the scenes at Amazon Studios.
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• Justin James Lopez
• You mentioned communication strategies, but then also the storytelling component, which I think kind of blend in certain ways, but also they could be mutually exclusive. So when it comes to the storytelling component, how are you creating those stories? What are you creating them for and who is the audience almost?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• I feel like I have the strong kind of passion and need to want to convey Amazon Studios to the rest of the world. I was really excited to join Amazon Studios in 2019 because I spent a really long time in my career at Warner Brothers, and I was there for about 10 years, and I got the call that like, "Hey, we're building this new studio from the ground up." And that part was super exciting to me. Most Hollywood studios have been around for 100 plus years, and so with this new opportunity also became this kind of journalistic approach of, "Hey, how is this all done?" So I do that on behalf of our technology teams.
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• One of the really big projects that has recently been released publicly is our virtual production stage. We have one of the largest virtual production sound stages in the world, and that story was super exciting to me. We did a whole launch ceremony and I've been helping with the PR campaign around Stage 15, just getting the word out, getting other studios excited, getting production companies in there and booked. The first movie to be recorded on this sound stage was Candy Cane Lane, so that just recently wrapped. So it's just been a very exciting journey.
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• Justin James Lopez
• Yeah. When it comes to the actual messaging, so it sounds like you're doing a lot, you're wearing a lot of hats even in this very specific space. How do you know what the audience wants when it comes to these different, I'm assuming you're using user research and all of that, but when it comes to the different campaigns that you're running, how do you know what's a good campaign?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Luckily for me, a lot of the things that I work on are internal campaigns, so it's really for employees, which I feel is the most important audience. I feel like you have to have good buy-in and excitement and energy internally in order for it to spread externally. So I feel like the more that I'm able to highlight teams, folks that are doing really amazing things, that are working on really cool projects, that are really putting their best foot forward, that are aligning with Amazon leadership principles, the more that I'm able to cover some of that content, I feel like it really resonates with employees because that's the world that they live in, and I've really been wanting to just get closer to that as far as engagement. And so my most recent remit is the kind of own culture across the studio and understand where employees are, what stories are important to them, and how to get that information out.
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• Justin James Lopez
• When it comes to moving into this space, was this something that you just woke up as a young girl and said, "You know what, I really want to do this."
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Yeah.
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• Justin James Lopez
• I joke but how did we get here?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Yeah, that's a good question. And what's so funny is how I got here was through a very boring topic that no one was interested in at the time. What propelled me to get into more of the media entertainment and studio space was information security. So I started in, I don't know, 2010, 2009, maybe before then, I can't even remember, the dates escaped me, but the first topic was information security. And so I became really good at information security, communications, awareness and training. And so what that is you have your annual training, you have your cybersecurity awareness month, and at the time when it all started, it was a topic that was really considered to be dry and mundane and no one was really interested. And then we had the Sony breach and everything shifted. Everything was on fire at that point. It's like we have to have all these budgets and we have to get people aware and we have to teach them how not to click on the wrong things and how to do the right things with our data.
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• And so that really propelled me, just my personal career track, because I was already in that mode of doing those type of communications and programs and making those stories interesting. So I did kind of a mockumentary video series on how to protect information and to show the fallout of a security breach similar to what happened at Sony. And over time, it kind of evolved and I started my own business. I did independent consulting, all on just comms, change management, awareness and training. I was just really good at being able to get a very dull topic and shine it up and make it somewhat interesting and palatable for employees so that it wasn't too technical so that it wasn't too scary.
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• Sometimes you can also have an approach where it comes to that type of training to where it's like, "I can't do anything about it." You see documentaries all the time on climate change, and it just feels like you're helpless. But I really am one who tried to hone in on any communications that I do with key takeaways so that you can walk away with a 1, 2, 3 step of what to do.
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• Justin James Lopez
• I think that's super dope that you took something and then you capitalize on a moment and then you really use that as a platform to just move into this. Now, the natural question, do you still work in your current role or maybe just in general, do you still work specifically with the information security or-
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• Jessica Fernandez
• I do. Yeah. So part of our comm strategy is to have a secure culture. So when you think of everything, all the data that we handle, things that come in that we have with AWS and different partnerships, it's all about data. And so it's in our comm strategy to keep information security, content security top of mind. I think the one separation that I have now is I more so focus on content security. I think of how to protect Rings of Power. That was one of my first projects when I started, and that's what I was actually hired to do in 2019.
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• Justin James Lopez
• I love that show, by the way.
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Yeah. Was to do content security for Rings of Power and to help all of those employees that had access to data, also crew and talent, to understand how this was the crown jewels of Amazon Studios and how to properly protect the information and data.
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• Justin James Lopez
• Does that mean trying to avoid leaks or also just how people use the content itself, the raw files?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Yeah, it's both. It's everything because even handling files, if you don't save it correctly or if you use something that's not a non-approved tool, it can get leaked to the public. So it's all related.
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• Justin James Lopez
• I feel like somehow it always gets leaked to the public though, right?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Yeah.
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• Justin James Lopez
• You always see these things and I wonder if you have any insight on this. I've always thought, is someone's job to leak things.
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• Jessica Fernandez
• To leak one good thing, right?
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• Justin James Lopez
• Yeah. That's their job, that's all we pay them to just do that.
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Yeah.
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• Justin James Lopez
• That's just my conspiracy theory, but maybe.
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• Jessica Fernandez
• I don't know. It may be true. I've always wanted to have a campaign where I follow the super fans, the people who really are fanatical about certain series. So Rings of Power is a really good example, and there's a lot of super fans that will follow every detail of the show. They want to find the shoot locations, they want to find which characters, what actors are coming up, and so following those people and finding out how they get the information, I think would be a kind of cool story and training approach.
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• Justin James Lopez
• Yeah. A part of the storytelling and drafting communications around drumming up excitement for these things means really understanding the intimate details of these projects as well. So do you get to be on set for some of these things. You meet the actors, you meet all these people, is that a part of your job too?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• In 2020, when Rings of Power started, I was actually scheduled to go to New Zealand and spend time there on set just to get... it's really good to see the sets, get an understanding of lay of the land if we're doing communications, posters, signage and things like that where that's all going. But that was also the day, doomsday, when COVID broke out, I didn't get a chance to get on the Rings of Power set, but at Warner Brothers it was a lot easier with things just being in person and easily available.
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• Justin James Lopez
• That's really exciting. I think that's the exciting component of it for sure, and it totally makes sense. I think a lot of things changed when 2020 hit. I want to go back for a second because you mentioned the information security component and that kind of led into your work that you do now with comms and storytelling, but I do recall you actually dabbling in graphic design and visual design as well, right?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Yeah, that's my first love. I really do love to do graphic design. That's where I first started and was able to learn more about communications and kind of tie the two together. I'm a total geek about topography and fonts. I used to have, I don't know, 50,000 fonts on my computer back in the day, which was the holy grail for a designer, but I don't really do design work as much anymore. I wasn't as good as the shortcuts of Adobe Creative Suite and all of that. So it would take me a really long time. It would really be a labor of love. So if anyone hears my name and I ever created anything for you, a flyer, website, that was a labor of love, it took me many, many hours.
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• Justin James Lopez
• Just know there was a lot of work that went into that.
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• Jessica Fernandez
• There was a lot of work. Yeah.
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• Justin James Lopez
• No, no, I like that little Easter egg. Do you still work on passion projects around that at all?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• I do here and there, and especially because I do own this communications team or remit, I can sometimes dabble in that. So I don't know, I probably drive my own team crazy a little bit. I will set up a prototype and say, "Hey, this is what I want it to look like," and then I'll hand it over to the wonderful talented designer on my team, Lauren. She's amazing. I can hand it over to her to perfect it, but I will kind of sketch out what I want or create a little something. I just can't seem to get away from it. It's something that I do, truly love.
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• Justin James Lopez
• No, yeah, I love that. I love that. Okay, so we're talking about passions, we're talking about creating it, exciting and drumming up excitement for everyone else. What excites you about the work that you're doing or maybe the work that's coming up, if we can talk about it?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• I can talk about it a little bit. I'm super excited just about innovation, just where things are going. And again, I feel with Amazon it's being at the ground floor of something that's super amazing. It's when I've always termed a baby studio and it's small and it's a small community and it's growing rapidly and it has grown rapidly since I've started. And just so to be able to see something and understand that you're on the ground floor of something that's brand new, that part is super exciting. I think the innovation and technology behind the studio is also super exciting, and we have a really strong tech team that's working on amazing things.
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• We have a studio 126 where we do a lot of just incubation time of allowing creatives to come in, test out new technologies and understand what Amazon Studios has to offer if you bring your production there. Same with Stage 15, just to see that to be an empty sound stage and now it's the largest virtual production value mall in the country. It's just super exciting to see. So those are some of the things that really ignite a fire and just really get me excited about being at a brand new studio.
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• Justin James Lopez
• Yeah. It looks like there's a lot of green space to play with shifting over, but when you think about the space that you're in now working with Amazon and Amazon Studios, what part of that is exciting for you versus some of the work that you did at other big studios?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• I think what's super exciting for me personally, that I haven't been able to do in the past because I had my own company and I was kind of running my own show independently, is to build a team. I really like that I have a wonderful, amazing, sorry guys, but it's an all girl team.
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• I just feel like, I don't know, just feel like we kick ass and we have our challenges as far as, hey, what's that team over there and what are they up to today? But I really feel like it's something that I take pride in. It's a joy for me. It's a joy to come to work and know that I can help women in their careers and help them to develop. That's something that I haven't been able to do in the past as much because I've been so focused on having my own thing and just running the show and now I'm able to take a step back and invest into others, and that part is exciting for me.
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• Justin James Lopez
• That's super dope. I mean, that's actually one of the things that I wanted to also bring up. So it's interesting that you mentioned that your team currently is just all women, because I was going to ask how much being in your role of leading all comms and being the owner of all of these things when it comes to creative storytelling and how we tell that story externally, internally, I was wondering how diverse is that space in general when you think about your peers and how does that impact the work that you do and just your mental space being in this work?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Yeah. I think if you really start to look more so in the tech industry, of course we all know that it's very male dominated. And what I really love about my role, kind of being this mixed role of internal communications and technology communications is that when you look at comms, it's typically more women in those roles, and I'm able to bring them over and expose them to the tech side, and then slowly I can see how those careers, those individuals can flourish more so into the tech space, which is of course the wave of the future.
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• We have so many different opportunities, and I feel like from a woman's perspective, when you hear tech, you get immediately kind of intimidated and think like, "Oh, I have to be a coder," and there's all these coding programs and there's all of these different languages. Now we have AI and there's just so many different intimidating terminologies where it comes to tech, and I feel like the mix of what we have right now is a good opportunity for women to discover roles in tech that they may not have ever thought about before.
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• Justin James Lopez
• Yeah. And it sounds like that's something that's also just really important to you to really open those doors for other people. I think that that's something that's interesting for me as well as I look at where I want to go in my career, and I'm sure a lot of the listeners as well, is how do you continue to grow specifically as a person of color where you know that there's already a lot in the tech space in corporate America. There's already a lot of barriers for entry and honestly barriers for existence, which I think we don't talk about as much. A lot of people talk about barriers for entry and we forget that it's also just kind of hard to stay here because if it was hard to get in the door, then it is very easy for people to just consistently try to find the thing that gets you back out of the door. And not to be too negative, but how do you work through building that space for this lifting as you climb mentality that you're talking about? How do you foster and maintain that space without being discouraged?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• It's challenging. It's a really good question and it is a challenge. I would say, one thing that I've been thinking about lately and talking to friends about and colleagues, I think it's really important to have something else. And that doesn't always mean a complete side hustle or business, but I feel like, and this is how I stay sane, you have to have something else that just motivates you that you love. For a long time in my career, I only loved my career. That's the only thing that matters. If I finished a project, if I did a cool event, if I'm mentioning in a press release or something to that effect, and it's like now I've really been just trying to focus on what else makes me happy.
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• And so I feel like sometimes we get so caught in our careers, you look up one day and it's like, "Where did all the years go? Where did all that time go?" And where you're trying to fight for that position and stay in that position. I feel like the people who focus, if you really look around, the people who focus on the external and have something else that they absolutely love, if it's biking, hiking, climbing, whatever, or if it's a side hustle or business, those are the people who are usually vibrating higher and a bit happier at work because it doesn't matter as much.
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• Justin James Lopez
• That's an interesting way to put it. It doesn't matter as much. So they can... But it makes sense to me. When you said it, it's funny naturally, right? It's kind of funny and you have to be able to laugh at these things, but it also makes 100% sense. I remember before I started to really lean into what makes Justin happy. It can't just be this. I remember talking to a good friend that asked me that question. They said, "Think about all of the roles that you play. You are an employee to your employer, you are a father to your son, you're a partner to whoever your partner is, your manager, to whoever you're managing in, friends to your friend, who are you to yourself at the end of all of that?
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• And I think that that's really kind of what you're getting at too, is who are you to yourself? Because if your entire identity is focused around all of the things that you represent to other people, then you are constantly forgetting to pour into yourself, which is where that burnout comes from. It's like nothing's pouring into you. You're not even pouring into you. And I mean, I don't know if that's where you were going, but-
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• Jessica Fernandez
• That's a great way to put it is who are you to yourself? And so I think that's my advice to anyone who's in corporate America, who's trying to make it at the end of the day, and to show up as your authentic self, you have to treat yourself well.
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• Justin James Lopez
• Yeah. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself, and also don't take your job to serious. We're not saving lives here. That's another piece of advice. A friend of mine, she is a neurosurgeon, so this was years ago, right? So I remember it was a group of us, we're just kind of hanging out talking, and I'm like, "I'm so stressed."
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• I'm like, "Oh my god, I'm so stressed. This week has been so hard on me." And then she's like, "Really, because you're not saving lives here." And I know that she wasn't trying to put me down. She was like, "I'm literally just adding perspective." She's literally saving lives and some of them she can't save, right? And there are people that are literally doing this, and not that I'm big on comparative suffering because I'm not, but I think that there is a such thing as understanding the perspective and perspective taking is really important in developing a more well-rounded view of yourself and the world. So that's something that I always, even now, it sticks with me. So whenever someone is super stressed in the office or just on my team, whatever, I go, "Hey, we're not saving lives here, we're not saving lives here."
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• Jessica Fernandez
• We have no nuclear codes.
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• Justin James Lopez
• Nothing. Nothing.
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Yeah.
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• Justin James Lopez
• We're changing lives. We're not saving them though. So that's just perspective. But I think that that's really valuable. When you think of some of the work that you do and if you could go back and give yourself advice on different things aside from that one, I think that that's a really good gem, the one that you just left. But if you could go back and say younger Jessica or younger Jessica by different names that are listening to this right now, what are some things that you would tell that version of you to help the version of you that exists right now?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• That's a good question. I think I would tell my younger self to just not to take myself so seriously, to just enjoy the time, enjoy the learnings because there's so much that you learn early in your career, nuggets that come up now, 20 years later in the interview, just as you were talking, I was thinking about the manager that hired me at Warner Brothers. And he's like, he didn't say we're not saving lives. He said, "The worst thing that could happen is someone can miss their boat pavement."
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• It's just like those are gems things that I just would just say, "Slow down and just take it in." I think we all just are rushing so much. And I see that a lot with folks who are a bit more junior just wanting to do so much, improve so much. And it's just like, "I understand and I get it wanting to be there," but just to, I guess, pace yourself. Because sometimes I feel like I've hit my head the most is when I'm rushing and running and trying to get to something versus just sitting down and saying, "What does the universe have for me and what does God have for me?"
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• Justin James Lopez
• Yeah, and we're getting into the weeds here a little bit, but how much of that pressure that we feel, whether it's someone that's younger in their career or just in general, I feel it sometimes too, and I have to remind myself, that's why I have that mantra of we're not saving lives, but how much of that is completely within our control of just saying, "Hey, slow down, slow your pace down," versus, and I'm going to bring it back to your expertise of communication. How much of that is how we communicate that to the people that are asking things of us, whether it's leadership, whether it's stakeholders, how do we bring them into that conversation? Imagine me just saying, "You know what, I'm not saving lives here. I have other passions. I'm going to prioritize my own stress." And then for the other person, the other stakeholders, it can seem like I'm just being lazy or I don't care, or I'm apathetic. How do we balance those equations?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• I got a good piece of advice on this recently, and I'm Gen X, right? So I think it's really important for young people to have mentors who are senior, but I think it's really important as well for seniors to have mentors who are younger, so a reverse mentor.
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• Justin James Lopez
• Okay.
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• Jessica Fernandez
• So to be able to understand millennials and just Gen Y, just all of the people who are coming into the workforce or more junior in their career, have a mentor. Take someone who's very junior to you out to lunch or build a relationship to gain that perspective. Because I think what you're saying is right, there is that piece of, I understand that you're in tune with your mental health and want to deprioritize the things that I may have as a priority as a manager. So there's a balance in that. But I think some of that dance as well is for some of the more tenured people to also understand the perspective of the younger generations.
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• Justin James Lopez
• So everyone should have a mentor and they should come from different spaces?
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Yeah. You should have a reverse mentor understanding generations that are after you or younger than you. I think that's really important because for me, I can be really dismissive. I feel like with Gen X, we're the water hose kids, we were locked outside the house.
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• Justin James Lopez
• Yeah.
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• Jessica Fernandez
• I say it all the time, "There weren't a lot of safe spaces for kids my age when I was growing up." So I sometimes bulldoze over anyone who's talking about... I used to, I try not to do it anymore. And I actually have learned a lot from my daughter, but she's like, "You're not in tune to mental health." And if I say the word anxiety, you laugh. That's the old Jessica. I am a bit more sensitive to that now, and I've had to be with having a team and I just feel like with my generation, we were just tough as nails. We were tough. And even when I tell people, people ask me, "Where did you grow up?" I'm like, "Oh, I grew up in Pasadena." And they're like, "Oh, that's so great." And I'm like, "Is it? Was it? I was locked out the house with a water hose?"
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• Justin James Lopez
• Yeah, no, no. I brought this up the other day that kids of this generation will probably never understand the fear that you have in your heart. And let's see, maybe you experienced this too because of what you just said, but the fear that you have in your heart when you see the streetlights cutting off, but you're too far away from your house.
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Yeah. To get there.
• Justin James Lopez
• Get there inside.
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Getting on your bike and trying to get back to the house.
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• Justin James Lopez
• Yeah, that's something. But no, thanks for that gem and I wanted to just thank you again for joining us here on this show.
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Of course.
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• Justin James Lopez
• This is really exciting to just learn more about your space and also the wealth of gems that you dropped here when it comes to just working on your career and also that reverse mentor thing, right? The idea, I think that one thing that's really cool about that, and this is my probably, I have a bunch of key takeaways, but the one thing that I really take away from this is that idea of we look at growth and development in this linear way of, as we get older, then we're replaced by a younger generation.
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• But I think that when you think about it, the way you just mentioned, of having these reverse mentors from different generations, from different spaces, it kind of creates this circular nature of growth where it's not a natural progression where people just have to leave when you just age out or you've been here for too long because you can constantly add value in different ways. And how that shows up manifests differently, but it's still just as valuable to the greater puzzle. So that's probably one of the best things. But yeah, thank you. I wanted to thank you again.
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• Jessica Fernandez
• Thank you. It's a pleasure being here. I'm honored to be on the show. Like I said, you've had some really cool guests, so I'm just happy to be amongst the crowd. It's really cool. Thank you so much, Justin.