Meet Paula Gammon Wilson

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Paula Gammon Wilson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Paula, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

According to everyone in my family, I was a bossy little kid. I am the youngest of four and I was born quite a few years after my older siblings. They very much doted on me until I was about three years old. Then I apparently became a total terror and all of the spoiling stopped! However, in some ways, those early years, where I “called the shots” and did what I wanted simply because I wanted to, informed how I made decisions later. Unless someone actively told me “No”, I would just go ahead and try things. If it worked, I would do the thing again and try to make it better, more efficient, easier, etc., each subsequent time until I was satisfied with it. That spirit of iterative experimentation is part of everything I do to this day.

It also helped that my mother was a genius, had skipped three grades, graduated from college at age 19 with a double major, and had then moved to Thailand to teach ESL with the Peace Corps – as a black woman – in 1962. (Where she met my father, who was also an overachiever.) My mother, in particular, very much fostered the idea that if there was something I wanted – I should just go ahead and make it or do it. Even though I probably could have hurled myself in a ton of different directions, I knew fairly early on that I wanted to work in theater/television. There are few things more iterative than a rehearsal process.

However, it took a little longer for me to recognize that I enjoyed process more than performance. At the time, I was attending a performing and visual arts high school in Massachusetts as a Theater Major with Voice Concentration (Musical Theater), but I found myself fascinated by the Technical Theater majors – especially the set designers and stage managers. After spending a year building up my portfolio, I was accepted into the Technical Theater Department and it was like everything slid into laser focus. That laser focus led me to theaters all over the US, and steady work as both a scenic painter and stage manager. Alongside my technical theater work, I stumbled into a career as a professional dancer, choreographer, and teacher. The combination of the two careers allowed me to satisfy both my creative and managerial passions.

Around 2009, it all coalesced into a directing career – first for theater, then for voice over and audio for animation. 2024 marks the 10-year anniversary of my company, Pepsqually VO and Sound Design, Inc., and looking back I am very aware that that bossy 3-year old who used to jump off of the roof into snow piles and fly kites in thunderstorms to see how high they would go, is still very much in there. However, my propensity for just jumping in is now tempered and is instead focused on how to support, foster, and incubate projects that matter to me. It would be easy to say that finding my purpose was a simple process and happened in a streamlined, magical fashion, but that is not at all the truth. Finding my purpose was its own iterative process. I found a general area I liked working in – production – and then just kept hammering away at all aspects of it, saying, “Yes, and…” whenever I was asked a question, until, eventually, I reached a point where I was the one asking the questions, “calling the shots”, and doing what I wanted. My 3-year old self would be proud.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am the Owner/Director of Pepsqually VO and Sound Design, Inc. in New York City and Pepsqually Portugal, LDA in Lisbon – award-winning, boutique, companion audio houses focused primarily on children’s content. My US studio is primarily focused on service work for a variety of clients including Cartoon Network, LionForge Entertainment, Pinna/Realm, and Wildbrain. My European studio is primarily focused on co-productions, new IP, and independent shows or series by smaller studios. I started with one rented studio, one engineer, and seven actors, and have since grown the company to two studios, three engineers, eight writers, and 100+ actors providing VO across several projects. The digital content for which we have provided casting, voice over performance direction, and/or sound design has amassed over 1 Billion streams as of 2024. Projects I have directed have won three Kidscreen Awards (among four nominations), eleven Parents’ Choice Awards, and garnered one NAACP Image Award nomination.

The Portuguese arm of my company, launched in early 2020, was created specifically to incubate and develop animated series, games, and podcasts – with a special focus on content by and for marginalized populations. We are currently in various stages of development with eleven different projects – from pitch bibles and preliminary budgets, all the way to completed episodes. To learn more about our current projects, or to discuss co-production opportunities, please visit www.pepsqually.com.

In addition to my audio companies, I am also the Artistic Director of a dance program for adults. TIPDI (The International Partner Dance Intensive), is the umbrella name for a series of dance intensives/”bootcamps” for adults who love to move. We welcome current and retired dancers, gymnasts, acrobats, yoga practitioners, martial artists, and dance hobbyists for two to three weekend intensives throughout the year. TIPDI events are designed for adults who have work and family responsibilities, so they are reasonably-priced, short, intense, conservatory-style dance weekends with top tier instructors and limited enrollment. Since our first event in 2013, we have welcomed 1800 participants from 14 countries. Our next event, TIPDI DUO, will take place March 7-9, 2025 in Lisbon. Enrollment is limited to 75 movement enthusiasts to ensure personal attention. You can check it out at www.tipdi.com.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Sometimes we have so little knowledge that we don’t realize how ill-equipped or frankly, dumb, we actually are. My family moved several times when I was a child and I was always the “new kid”. This experience of repeatedly stepping into the unknown made me hyper-aware of when I had no clue. So I learned early on that it was best to watch and wait for a bit until I gained an understanding of a situation, a conversation, or a new space. My willingness to wait and listen, without judgement, saved me time and time again. This habit came in especially handy when I began traveling internationally for work. I would wait, observe, and absorb the local customs quite quickly at each new stop and it resulted in my receiving a level of respect and welcome that my colleagues did not always receive. Basically, take a moment to recognize your own ignorance, and you’ll get past it a lot faster and with a lot less heartache.

The arts high school I attended, The Walnut Hill School, was quite intense. I believe it has changed a bit since I was there in the mid-1990s, but at the time, we attended regular college-preparatory classes from 7:45 am – 2:30 pm and then took classes in our arts “major” from 2:40 pm – 8 pm. Then we had rehearsals from 8 pm – 10 pm. Then we’d do our homework until midnight or 1 am. Rinse and repeat. We were required to work at our major during the summers and a lot of us, myself included, also worked on the weekends. We lived at the school, so we were really locked into that schedule. Consequently, we were all wizards at time-management. That skill has played into every part of my life since then. From making a personal schedule for a beach trip to scheduling 68 actors across multiple timezones for a remote recording session, the time management skills I developed during my high school years have proved vitally important to every aspect of my life.

I learned (the hard way) when to be patient and when to be impatient. Be patient when working on a project with lots of collaborators. A little grace will go a long way. I still struggle with this sometimes. I have been managing productions professionally since 1997. Sometimes, I’m able to see that we are approaching a pothole several miles before the rest of the team. It can feel like nails on the chalkboard of my soul when my suggestion of caution is not heeded. As I’ve grown older, I have learned that screaming into the void only damages my vocal cords. Long story short, if no one pays attention, stay patient. Continue doing what you were asked to do, to the best of your ability, and be prepared to pivot when necessary. At the same time, when there is a project that YOU, personally, want to get off the ground, be impatient. Waiting for permission, waiting for a chance, waiting for someone to pay attention, is a great way to never start anything. Sometimes you actually just have to do the thing – and see what happens.

Mentors are gold. I had the distinct luck of having some genuinely excellent mentors who helped me fail/succeed in all the best ways. They let me try things, made suggestions, picked me up when my choices didn’t work, and gave me constructive critique and praise when my choices did work. They were a combination of teachers and people who were actively working in similar careers who saw something interesting, or of promise in what I was doing. Their advice saved me many times. If you can find a mentor, someone who has been there and done that for longer than you – and is generous enough to speak with you about their experience – hold on to them. They will make an incredible difference in your ability to move forward successfully.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

Content creation and how media is funded, produced, and distributed has changed a great deal in the last ten years. Until fairly recently, the majority of our work at Pepsqually VO/Pepsqually Portugal has been making shows for other companies. Now I am increasingly developing and producing projects that interest me or matter to me personally. It has been a wonderful shift creatively, and from a managerial standpoint it has been surprisingly stress-free. Now, when I see a roadblock ahead, I can simply plan for it, rather than trying to convince several other people that the block is actually there. At the same, this company-wide redirection does come with some fiscal challenges. I’ve spent my entire career being paid to make shows for other people. Now the shoe is on the other foot and there is a learning curve. However, I’m enjoying this particular challenge. The reward is producing projects that I am proud to attach my name to – and that is why I am willing to do the work to make this new chapter successful for my company.

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