We’re all really happy that Felicia Williams has come to join us as Next New Networks’ new Director of Community Programming, charged with developing new models for programming and entertainment for the communities we serve, and new ways of working with independent and emerging talent. We’ve gotten to know and admire Felicia during her groundbreaking work at The Daily Reel and YouTube, and she’s long been one of the people in the business that we really felt a kinship with in terms of our hopes and vision for online video, so it’s great to have her join our team.

A lot of people who read this blog might already know Felicia from her great work in the space, but here’s some more about her:

Born in the same dusty mill town as Jack Kerouac, Felicia has mirrored the travels of the famous writer for the past decade. Having lived in Lowell, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, she has become rather accustomed to life on the road and holds great pride in the ablity to live out of a single suitcase.

A writer by nature, Felicia’s passion for film and media began in high school, where she volunteered as a news anchor for her local TV station. Reporting on such hard-hitting stories as the local clothing drive and that new diner that just opened outside of town, Felicia realized that alternative media was a lot more fun then stuffy old network news. Continuing on her newfound media path, Felicia attended NYU to study Journalism and Cinema Studies.

After college, Felicia dove right into the world of film and television. Working as a production assistant for film (The Departed, The Gardener of Eden, Pride and Glory) and television (Law and Order: SVU, The Bedford Diaries), she had the opportunity to work at every dirty street corner and abandoned warehouse that New York City had to offer. Bored of the scenery, she moved to LA where she worked on her last major motion picture before finding her home on the Internet.

In 2006, Felicia signed on as the second employee and Assistant Editor of The Daily Reel, an online magazine about online video. Returning to her writing roots, she interviewed such popular web producers as Renetto, Smosh, LisaNova, and Nalts. While writing reviews on undiscovered talent and videos online, Felicia also developed and produced a web show that she scripted and hosted with the help of NNN’s own Michelle Deforest (who was also at The Daily Reel).

Falling more and more in love with online video, Felicia left The Daily Reel in 2007 to work on the Editorial/Content team for YouTube. Specializing in a broad range of topics that included pets, travel, video games, web series, and celebrity news, Felicia programmed the Featured Videos for several YouTube category pages and the homepages of both US and Canada.

Welcome, Felicia — it means great things ahead for everyone who works with us.

Please promulgate us on the interweb.

Posted by Tim at 5:23 pm on Friday, September 26th, 2008 in NNN People. You can follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.