By Chris McCoy ’93
Today, Philinese “Philly” Kirkwood ’11 is riding high in New York City. A commercial she helped produce for the NBA’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Game and
Celebration was just featured as Adweek’s Ad of the Day. It was the first television spot produced for the league by Translation, the creative agency where Kirkwood has served as associate producer for the Content Production Division since October 2014.
But despite the fact that she has been a New Yorker for almost two years now, the native Memphian still keeps a phone number with a 901 area code. “I’ll probably never change my number, which has its positives and its negatives. But I’ve had it since I was 14 years old. I grew up in Memphis, born and raised,” she says. Her parents are Alan Kirkwood, an entrepreneur, and Philinae Kirkwood, a physical therapist.
As Kirkwood approached graduation from White Station High School in 2007, she applied to many different colleges and universities with the intention of leaving her home town. “Rhodes was the only school in the South I applied to,” she recalls. “It’s funny. I thought I wanted to be a plastic surgeon when I was in high school. I actually applied to a lot of schools that specialized in medicine.” But a prospective student visit to Rhodes would change the course of her life. “When I was visiting Rhodes for a weekend, I was discussing it with an academic advisor, and they were telling me all of the courses I would have had to take along with my liberal arts [requirements], and I thought, ‘It’s not for me.’ I needed something with a little more variety.” Rhodes, she says, gave her a chance to think more deeply about her life goals. “I didn’t have to know what I wanted to do right then.”
So, she unexpectedly found herself staying in her hometown for college. “I got scholarship money, which was extremely important to me,” she explains. “And, even though I was from Memphis, I felt like there was a lot [about Memphis] I hadn’t experienced on my own.”
At Rhodes, Kirkwood became involved with the McCoy Theatre, acting in plays like Taming of the Shrew and No Exit. “In my sophomore year, I had an epiphany,” she says. “I was taking theater classes, and I loved theater. I really enjoyed politics and news, however, and that’s when I decided I wanted to be a news reporter. I reached out to (theater professor) Cookie Ewing and the theater department, but there were no classes offering broadcast journalism. Professor Ewing told me how to combine my liberal arts experiences and make them match what I wanted to do. I love the news and I love theater. In news reporting, in some ways, you are acting, and I wanted to talk about hard news and politics. So I was able to learn about politics with my political science degree and minor in theater. That way I could have the best of both worlds and, eventually, become a news reporter.”
Among her favorite learning experiences at Rhodes was studying Shakespeare with Associate Professor of English Scott Newstok. “That was fabulous. We went through Shakespeare’s great plays, and I found out my favorite play is Titus Andronicus.”
And as she studied the Bard’s insights on the intersection of power and personality, she was also tearing into the nuts and bolts of modern political campaigns in a political science class. “We were going over congressional campaigns, seeing how voters actually vote, and how people work on campaigns. I think I liked that so much because I was taking it from the perspective of a news reporter, reporting the facts and being as objective as possible with the content, and not subjective.”
But, she adds, “My absolute favorite course that I took, that I feel like was designed specifically for me, was a course called Docu-Drama. I was the only person in the class. Professor Ewing was my teacher. It combined documentary and theater.” The course culminated in Kirkwood writing and producing a one-woman show where she explored the harsh reality of the Memphis underworld by portraying the tragic stories of four real-life Memphis sex workers based on interviews she had conducted.
Ewing also led her to another educational opportunity that would prove invaluable. The summer between her junior and senior years, Kirkwood took an intense two-month course at the New York Film Academy. “I learned to write, shoot, and edit news stories for online content—the whole new realm of digital journalism. And that was the moment when I realized, this is what I should be doing. Everything is now a one-man band. I went back to school, and that was my goal.”
But like millions of students who had the misfortune to graduate during the Great Recession, opportunity was hard to come by for Kirkwood. “I applied for a number of fellowships and jobs when I was a senior,” she recalls. “I was very, very persistent, and when it came to my goals, I knew what I needed to get there. I knew I needed a job. But I did not get a single job or fellowship that I wanted. I would make it to the second round, but I didn’t get accepted to anything—not the jobs I wanted in New York or in Memphis. And that was so hurtful to me. I had worked so hard and didn’t understand why I wasn’t getting a job.”
After a painful interval, she found a position at Universal Asset Management, a Memphis aviation company. “While this had nothing to do with what I wanted to do, it was useful in that I got to get office experience, real work,” she says. Within a year, she was promoted to marketing manager, producing public relations and marketing content. “And the best part is, the company gave everybody free flight lessons, so I have six hours on my private flying license!”
Kirkwood learned that opportunity comes in many different forms. “Everything was like a stepping stone. Even though I did not get what I wanted, this job set me on the path I wanted to be on.” Filled with renewed confidence, she saved up her money and struck out for New York. “I left Memphis with a suitcase and a toothbrush in April 2013. I did not have a single job lined up,” she remembers. Her savings, she calculated, were enough to last for a two-month job search. “That was the plan. My money was depleted in, like, two weeks.”
Staying with a friend, Kirkwood took a job as a waitress to make ends meet. “If that doesn’t bring you down to earth, I don’t know what will,” she says. “I thought I had tough skin, but I had to get tougher skin.” Undeterred, she continued to beat the bushes, looking for work. “I applied for more than 210 jobs in four and a half months, and I got 25 interviews.” The interview that finally paid off was for a freelance production assistant at the advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather. “This, again, changed my direction. This is not what I really wanted to do, but it gave me the production experience I felt was essential for me to do work in this industry.”
With her foot in the door, she advanced in her field through persistence and networking. “I can’t say it enough. If there’s somebody important you happened to meet three years ago, connect with them on all kinds of social media.”
Her hard work paid off when she landed a job at the digital content company Interactive One, where she worked with musicians such as John Legend, Jennifer Hudson, and Toni Braxton. “We had artists in intimate settings playing their upcoming albums, and then we would have an interview portion.” After a year, she moved on to her current position at Translation.
“We execute the ideas that our client and our creatives have developed. The client wants a 60-second commercial, the creatives come up with the actual concept, and then our production team makes it happen. We go over the budget, we scout locations, we hire talent. We make sure the talent can get paid. We hire a director and the staff they need as well. We make sure the commercial is executed in the most timely and efficient manner.”
Kirkwood says she has found her niche, and Translation allows her to also pursue her interest in investigative journalism. “I’m really enjoying what I’m doing. It’s fast paced, and we work long hours and long nights. But when you see the end product, you just feel so accomplished and so relieved.”
Her advice for the recent graduate is simple. “I feel like it’s so trite: ‘Be persistent! Never give up!’ But it’s so true.”