Reena Singh – Disney

Currently, Reena Singh is a Director of Development of the Disney Channel Original Movies department. While at the Disney Channel, she has worked on such franchises as High School Musical, the Cheetah Girls and Camp Rock. She began her media career at Bon Appetit magazine–where, yes, she ate very well–and then attended the Annenberg School of Journalism’s Masters Program at the University of Southern California. While at USC, she became a producer for ABC Network News and after several years on the road covering US politics, natural disasters and international events, she crossed over to the entertainment division as an ABC Entertainment Associate. Born in the USA, she’s a Boston gal who attended Boston College and continues to maintain strong Punjabi ties to her close-knit Indian family.

ASIANCE: Tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to the West Coast.

Reena: Before I went to BC, I had applied to some schools on the West Coast and got in but at the last minute I chickened out. At that age, I just wasn’t ready to leave my family and leave everything I knew back home. I went to Boston College which was a great experience and I don’t regret it but when I graduated, I felt I was ready to make that journey. I didn’t specifically know what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be. I knew one person out in LA, my roommate and a friend from college. I knew it was time for me to try something different. So I left the nest and came to LA. Upon a week after arriving in LA, I decided I wanted to get into the magazine business. Of course, I should have gone to NY but found myself in LA. After a lot of determination, I found myself temping at the Conde Nast office.

When the Editor-in-Chief of Bon Appetit magazine’s assistant quit, my resume was brought in front of him. So I started working at Bon Appetit Magazine. That was probably the best job I’d ever had but I was too young to appreciate the job. I did really eat well. It was a beautifully put together magazine. It taught me so much about a) working with writers as an editor b) writing and really making use of all your senses. When you’re writing about food, you have to write about how it feels, smells, tastes. The power of description was drilled into me.

Then I went to USC and received my Masters in Broadcast Journalism. While I was there, I met the West Coast Bureau Chief of the ABC Network in LA. I met him my first month in grad school. He offered me an internship. Within a few months, I pitched a story and he liked it. We went off and made it. It aired on World News Tonight. Then I pitched another one. After a month of this, he decided it might be wise to bring me on permanently. So I had a job while I was still in grad school. I went to school at night and worked during the day.

I just really worked hard and graduated. The next few years I covered many amazing things, including a Presidential campaign. I was on the Howard Dean campaign. I travelled to Iraq for war coverage. Within the US, I covered natural disasters and celebrity trials. After a few years, I was about to move to New York to work for World News Tonight in New York, when I was accepted into the ABC Entertainment Associate Program. It was a real crossroads for me. It was a point in my career where I had to look at everything I had been doing and wanting. I had to look at myself and what my passion was. It really was storytelling. So that was the connective tissue. I felt like I needed to explore the entertainment industry in LA. Being a journalist also helped me make that decision. Being a journalist, you’re naturally curious about the world. It’s what motivates you to do what you do. This opportunity to be an entertainment associate at a network and shadow all kinds of executives and understand how an entire entertainment network functions, it was just too great.

I worked with many, many executives. One of them was Gary Marsh at the Disney Channel. At the end of my year as an Entertainment Associate, he offered me a development position in his company. I had spent some time with him at the Disney Channel. I had watched the Hannah Montana pilot. I traveled to Utah with him to the set of High School Musical. There was no doubt in my mind that both these properties were going to be big game changers for the Disney Channel. It was just too exciting of an opportunity to pass up. I’ve really enjoyed making all kinds of movies for the Disney Channel and have been enjoying our youthful audience and the content we make for them.

ASIANCE: Any new diverse characters?

Reena: Diversity is extremely important for the Disney Channel. We cast colorblind. My first movie that I did was “Jump In” with Corbin Bleu and Keke Palmer. It was a primarily African American cast. We wanted to feature Corbin and then Keke came along. How do you say no to Keke Palmer? She was a really big win for the movie. We cast Corbin’s real father as his father for the movie because he happens to be a real actor. I had the fortune to travel to India to work on the Cheetah Girls franchise. We cast Indian actors from the States and India. In everything I develop, I always think, “How can we include diversity?” In our casting process, which is taken very seriously, we always ask ourselves, “Do we have enough diversity?”

Bottom line, when I grew up in this country and I watched TV, I wasn’t up on that screen. The world has changed. Our audience has become very diverse. It’s a passion for me, to put kids on the air, that our audience can relate to and I didn’t get the opportunity to see as a child.

ASIANCE: If you weren’t the Director of Development at Disney what other career path would you have followed?

Reena: I would have loved to work in Public Policy or Foreign Policy in Washington. Yes that is what I would want to do!

ASIANCE: What is a typical day like for you?

Reena: Let’s talk about my day today. A typical day involves everything from meeting writers, producers for new ideas. They’ll come in and they’ll pitch to me. It could be an original idea. It could be an idea based on a book. It also involves some form of production whether it be casting or costume approval or looking at a set designer’s resume.

We always have movies in production. Very rarely are we down. It’s also all the day to day duties of managing a slate of movies in development. Outlines and scripts come in during various parts of development. They need to be read and notes need to be given. Then, I try to reserve part of my day to reading new material or maybe watching a director’s cut or a movie. I need to keep myself fresh on what’s new and out there both in terms of writing and directors.

ASIANCE: Do you admire any other Asian American women?

Reena: Mira Nair. I got to know her a little bit when I interviewed her. She’s very savvy yet never compromised her artistic vision, at least in my opinion. She still has a love for her craft and for storytelling despite all the successes that she’s had. She seems to still be really invigorated by what she does. She has such a healthy balance between her work, her passion and her art and her life, which is her family and the charity work that she does. She derives inspiration from both her work and the great work that she does through her charities. I find that very inspirational.

ASIANCE: What did you interview her for?

Reena: I interviewed her for the Los Angeles Indian Film Festival Magazine. I helped the festival by putting together a magazine that they passed out.

ASIANCE: What is your favorite film by Mira Nair?

Reena: It might be cliché as a Punjabi Indian woman but it would have to be Monsoon Wedding. It was set in New Delhi, which is where my family is from and it had all the chaos, the drama, the humor and the tears that my family does. Mine is the deep dark family drama that the movie had. Just that sense of everyone in everyone’s business; the love and the fighting and making up. It’s what a big Punjabi family is all about. She captured that for me.

ASIANCE: When you were on the road covering politics, anything particular stick out that you remember?

Reena: I covered two big political stories. One was the California recall. I was, for a short while, on Governor Greg Davis’ Press Corp. and Howard Dean’s Press Corp. It’s unbelievable how hard these people campaign and work. For the Howard Dean campaign, sometimes it was 5 cities in one day. It was buses and planes crisscrossing the country.

I was there when Howard Dean lost the Iowa Caucus and he let out that big scream. I was there. I was behind the stage. I was watching his advisers. He was surprised he lost the Iowa Caucus. He was the front runner. It was a shock, yet it wasn’t a shock to any of us in the press corp because as we went from event to event and we were getting closer to the caucus, you would see less and less local people and more and more supporters who had been bused in. They were volunteers really. He had many people who believed in him.

That night, his advisers were encouraging him to go out and give the crowd what they deserved. There were college students who had given up their break and people who took time off to campaign for him. He wanted people to feel uplifted. He was trying to be enthusiastic. The sound quality wasn’t what it should have been in that room. All the cameras were on a fixed platform shooting at the Governor but not shooting at the crowd. I had my little PD150 camera and I was shooting at the crowd. I was shooting his speech and also shooting the crowd. They were very into it. If you were there, it wasn’t what the cable networks put together over and over and over. I remember saying something to my network colleagues and Diane Sawyer was the only one who paid attention when I spoke to her. She asked me for my footage and she put together a piece about what it was like that night and perhaps the media hadn’t been so fair to him. What I learned is how powerful the media is in Presidential campaigns.

See exactly what Reena is speaking about in the video below.

ASIANCE: What advice would you give to other women who want to follow in your footsteps?

Reena: Following your dreams is so important. I don’t regret the experiences I’ve had. It made me the person and executive I am today. I do think I spent a lot of time, early in my career, second guessing who I was. I spent a lot of time in my life second guessing who I was. As I got older, I gained experience and courage to go after the things I really wanted to. So that is the advice I would give: Follow your dreams and courageously go after what you desire in life.

ASIANCE: What’s next for Disney?

Reena: Announced in the Hollywood Reporter today is this new movie called Lemonade Mouth with Debra Martin Chase. It’s what if Breakfast Club started a garage band. It’s based on a book, I found and read and fell in love with and just didn’t give up on. It took a couple years to make this deal. We didn’t give up on it. It’s great to see it be made finally.

We have another movie based on a book by Meg Cabot called Avalon High. It’s filming in New Zealand right now.

ASIANCE: Do you have a favorite Disney character?

Reena: I love Tinkerbell. She is so sassy, mighty, yet playful at the same time…a lot of attitude.

ASIANCE: What do you do in your free time?

Reena: I read. I read for myself. I just finished, Ladies Number One Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. It’s about a woman in Africa who opens her own detective agency, which is odd because women really aren’t detectives where she is from. It’s a beautiful, fiction book. I’m reading The Translator by Daoud Hari. It’s about a man from Darfur who’s very educated. Once the genocide started, he found himself in a refugee camp and because he was so educated, he became a Sudanese translator, which was a very dangerous thing to do.

ASIANCE: How do you balance career and social life/ family?

Reena: You just have to make it a priority. Anything in life will take as much as you give it. So you have to make boundaries. I try not to answer emails after 8pm. I try not to answer any emails until 9am, unless it’s a true emergency. I call my mother every morning on the way to work. I call my sister on evenings back from work. My family is still on the East Coast. You just have to own it. I could have a work event every night of the week if I wanted to. I can think, “I’m single. I don’t have a family. I don’t have children. What I should be doing is working really hard to build up my career.” That is important but you have to take time out for yourself and really nurture your relationships. At the end of the day, when you’re done with your life, those are the relationships you’re going to take with you, in terms of what meant the most of our life.