Austra Zubkovs

Hi, I'm Austra (pronounced Ow-Stra). I live in Troy, NY. This website bio was written in 2013.

I love media, design and new technology and have a strong social entrepreneurial spirit. My passions get stoked around education, culture, place, and class, and the role media and new technologies play in remedying or exacerbating these issues. I've studied everything from video production and web design, to major facets of the human condition such as the foundations of western civilization, critical thinking, communication theory, Plato's major works, how memes spread, biological anthropology, and human variation. I'm still studying, still soaking up knowledge where ever I can.

Throughout my life I've thrived in leadership roles in creative environments focused on people. I've worked in communications at a Boston law school and as sales and marketing manager for an web startup. I spent a glorious four years at Arts Engine, an indie media company in NYC, doing outreach around our documentaries, managing content and design of our online community MediaRights.org, and helping to run four consecutive Media That Matters film festival of social-issue shorts. In college, I was Chief Videographer for our school's news channel. Even in highschool I worked as an after-school counselor and site art director for underprivileged youth. Since I was 15 I worked at my Latvian youth summer camp, growing from "kitchen slime" to counselor to folk dance teacher, and last summer was promoted to the number-two-in-charge position of Program Director.

I work best combining these interests and experiences together to create outside-the-box approaches and unconventional connections. My friends say I'm addicted to the internet, but really, I just see the endless potential it holds. I love figuring out multi-channel, robust social marketing strategies around targeted business goals and tracking those successes while learning what improvements need to be made. Call it social media, call it old fashioned communication, call it.. creativity. Call it the ancient art of storytelling. Moving people with meaning.

<--- This is me. Ready to do something BIG. Interested in joining me?

Oh, and my hair is not nearly as long and disheveled as this photo suggests.