Meet Aris Kakkis

We recently connected with Aris Kakkis and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Aris, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

Being surrounded by high-achievers, in particular, my father and 3 other siblings certainly created an environment where a good worth ethic and perseverance was the formula for success and it seemed that success was the only goal. My mother would often say, we don’t seek attention for ourselves but we let our work “speak” for us. In many ways, that would drive a lot of my desire to be successful at whatever goals I put my sights on.

As a child, I remember feeling quite lucky that I would show a considerable amount of initial success at almost anything I attempted whether it would be art, music, science or math, but soon learned that my restless nature would always keep me from the focus I needed to take it to the next level. And then there was the instilled fear that being a doctor or lawyer was the only ticket to a “great” life – and was very sternly discouraged from the dream career pursuits that my parents deemed too “risky” and unpredictable – careers in music, theater, acting.

Being the child of immigrant parents, our upbringing was very strict. Obey and respect your elders, do as you are told by your teachers – never step out of line. This was my foundation despite being surrounded by other kids my age, who had much more lenient family lives. Some friends could have sleepovers and late night hours – things that were strictly forbidden in my household. As a kid, I sometimes resented such restrictions, but did also manage to find a balance that didn’t compromise most of my friendships nor compromise my academic path.

My father died when I was only 17, when I was just about to begin college. Despite the emotional loss of losing my father, I felt grounded and secure in pursuing my journey (to become a doctor like he and my two older siblings.) At some point, however, I became disenchanted with that pathway and began to evolve my career path but didn’t really know how, I felt abandoned in that I saw how my parents nurtured my older brother and sister but when it came my turn, did not get that same amount of attention, particularly after my father passed away.

I had always heard that “if you love what you do, then you are certain to be successful” but it gnawed at me that making a good living was in direct opposition with my growing creative aspirations. Indeed the medical path was structured and at the end, you have a career and a picket fence. But I knew I wanted something more creative.

While I continued forward to get my science degree, I began investing time in music on the side. I also had a fondness for art and design fueled by a love of the creativity of the record business, from music production to marketing and package design.

In a few years time, I had landed a position at The Walt Disney Studios working on TV Shows and Feature Film Marketing, some of the most memorable years of my life. Surrounded by so many creative types, it was an environment that fueled and inspired me. Throughout my time at the Studio, I continued to work on outside music productions and often collaborated with other writers and producers. For the first time, I understood what it felt like to really be in my element. I worked at the studio for nearly thirty years.

I had always had a passion for acting and live singing – and when the Covid lockdowns hit, I decided to take that downtime to train in acting and singing…and once zoom classes were established, I took every class I could take for that entire period.

When I first sang in public one of the first comments I received was, “Where have you been all this time?” a compliment that I will always cherish. These days, I have a thriving freelance film marketing design career that I love plus have been in many local stage plays and musicals as well as singing live with some of the greats of musical theatre, Ilene Graff, Billy Stritch and Michael Orland.

As I type this, I am simultaneously in rehearsals starring in two different stage dramas for two different production companies. An original play, “Which Way The Wind Blows,” a play that received such great notices for an earlier production this past March 2025, and will be presented by Olive Branch Productions in Santa Clarita. for a set of September performances. The other play, the classic “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” just started rehearsals for Charles Stewart Howard Playhouse in Woodland Hills for shows that will take place October 2025.

A great deal of all of my favorite moments in life are due to an unwavering work ethic and the discovery of the passions that fuel my soul.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

Growing up in a family of doctors also meant that I never had any exposure to any other kind of career. As a child there was the occasional friend who wanted to be a policeman or a fireman – or even a sports hero of one kind or another, but no particular career really interested me, except perhaps maybe the excitement of being a performer. However, from an early age, my parents were quite explicit about not pursuing such a risky and unpredictable path.

As a child, I had a passion for graphic art. At a very early age, I had collected published books of lettering, fonts, calligraphy, even optical illusions and other types of graphic treatments. Soon I found myself inspired by pop music album art and design, in the era of double gatefold deluxe packaging, graphic treatments and lettering that I would often adapt to create cover pages for my college reports and research project covers. In my soul, I often preferred working on the cover more than I enjoyed working on the topic of the report.

It wouldn’t be until my early 30’s that I would learn that this side passion of graphic design was an actual career path – and ultimately end up leading the design team on International Film Marketing campaigns for the Walt Disney Company. It would be here that I would have the most fulfilling creative position working on the best products with the top creative marketing minds of the world.

The irony of all irony happened when I finally had to explain to my mother what I did for a living and at this time, she produced a long-ago written letter from my 7th grade teacher explaining that my aptitudes and interests suggest a career in “Creative Advertising” which floored me. “So why didn’t you show me this before?” I asked. She explained that she and my father didn’t really know what that was, so they didn’t know how to share this information and they just put it aside. I often wonder what might have been had I known.

During the lockdown of Covid, my career actually blossomed as the need for “hands-on” creative types who could produce commercial grade materials without the need of a team or an entire agency structure. That allowed me to make a living, while the rest of the world had been shut down.

It was also during this time that I decided that during this downtime, I would use the soon widely available offering of Zoom classes to study other passions in my life, acting and singing. I took every class I could find and spent most every day from 4-8 hours per day in zoom sessions. In between classes were spent woking on homework assignments — mostly recording songs and learning and mastering the art of self-taping – all assignments that would be turned in and then evaluated in the classes.

These days, all these new skills have been put to great use. I still have my career and stability by freelancing my creative design and marketing work, and simultaneously landing many stage roles as well as live singing gigs, film and TV work. I am currently starring in two stage shows (“Which Way The Wind Blows” and “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” which are being presented by two different theatre companies in Southern California.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

One of the pieces of advice I remember reading early on my life was, “Get a job in the industry you want to be in.” If you want to work in the music industry, get a job, even if it’s in the mail room, at a music-oriented company – like record label.” Sadly and regretfully, I did not follow that advice because of my parents wouldn’t allow it. However, as I look at my career path, had I interned early at Walt Disney or other entertainment companies that really sparked my interest, my aptitude and interests would have taken quite far and much earlier in my life.

The other piece of advice was to learn all you can learn about your field. I often worked all day and then went to UCLA Extension at night and trained in classes catering to film and TV production, marketing, design and even business. In many ways I wish I had gone to college for this training, but in the end, it doesn’t matter how you get the training as long as you get the training. Most fields evolve so quickly that the more foundational knowledge you have, the more competitive you are in the marketplace. I never stop training, even today. Not only do I love to learn, but it feeds my soul to find knew and modern ways to be creative.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?

One thing I realized very quickly when I decided to leave the family directive (of becoming a doctor) and pursuing a more creative career path, is that I didn’t have an advocate or a mentor. Someone who understood and respected my talents and abilities, but was also not a competitor, especially an insecure competitor in the same field – but rather, someone who I would work for that would groom me for my ultimate potential and not just keep me in the positions that served a more typical, less supportive boss.

Later in my career, I would begin meet people who had such a mentor – and I finally saw the upside of having an ally who had the status and the ability to groom up-and-coming talent and mentor hard-working, innovative types like myself. This is a situation I have often found in creative endeavors – and even in learning situations where you might be taking a master class with someone who is essentially in your field that you were considered a competitor as well as a student.

To this day, I am blessed by many career highs and accomplishments, but I do believe having a supportive mentor and role model might have accelerated my career path – and would have provided me opportunities I would otherwise never have access to. Now I suppose I should figure out how one goes about finding a mentor, or better yet – it is ever too late to find a mentor? As one acting coach has told me many times, “Dreams do not have an expiration date.”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ariskakkis.net
• Instagram: @aris_kakkis
• Facebook: Aris Kakkis
• Youtube: Arism Studios @arismultimedia