We recently connected with Saira Umar and have shared our conversation below.
Saira, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
Being a creative person, trying to “make it” is always going to be filled with a lot of rejection. Ultimately, your passion has to outweigh the doubt, and your determination to get better and keep going until you get your chance has to come from within. Turn every “no” into a “not yet” until you get a “yes,” or decide to give yourself a “yes.” You have to have a unwavering hope and belief in yourself, because the alternate is giving up or doing it half-baked. Only you have to give yourself permission to create.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I’m a creator and storyteller, and that takes me to many different types of projects and mediums. Most recently, I created a pilot episode of animation through an animatic by leading a team of over 100 creatives over 8 months. With this project, “Tea Leaves Last,” I was able to develop the idea of magical tea powers, write the script, help guide the visual concept art and direct the boards and acting, also getting hands-on with the storyboard revisions, art feedback and drawing and editing. I also got to voice act and sing the opening titles. TEA exemplifies many of my creative passions and skills and how I’d like to use them all to create immersive stories that take into account visuals, sound and word to create an impression.
Outside of that project, I’ve been working at traditional Hollywood studios in animation, previously on shows for Netflix, Comedy Central and Amazon Prime, and currently at Disney on a Marvel show.
In my free time now, I’m working on more stories— writing both for the screen and novels, as well as looking into graphic novels and comics. Ultimately I want to tell stories of hopeful worlds that are broadly appealing in their genuine specificity, grounded in lived experience that makes intentional choices towards the overall package. It keeps it exciting and fresh to always be learning and taking on new challenges and projects. Though my goal is to be a showrunner, I have a lot of side quests I’d also like to accomplish like publishing novels, running a small crafts shop, making a board/video game or escape room, and more!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Unrelenting drive and passion. As mentioned earlier, reflecting on yourself and your goals and finding the determination within yourself to make it happen. When you do something, do it wholeheartedly. I think part of my drive and passion also comes from a deep curiosity and eagerness to always learn more about the human experience and our world. This helps drive me to do more in order to “collect more data,” meaning learn about more “things that happened.” Once you learn enough, you can start drawing connections and parallels, and learning just how inter-related everything is, is inspiring. We only have one life and limited time, so trying to make the most of it and unapologetically chasing your dreams.
Sharp memory (or aided memory systems!). Tying into my love of learning, being able to remember things well helps me as a leader and a storyteller, being able to bring up things from the past or facts learned in passing just adds to the repertoire of what you can pull from as a creative. Your creativity is really only limited by your own mind and heart, so being able to expand your thoughts and using art to help process those as well is a self-feeding cycle. Having a good memory also can help with getting to know more people and helps you work in a team better if you’re able to fill in gaps for others. Of course, we’re just mere mortals with flawed brains though, so no memory is perfect, you can supplement this by thorough organization and processes— note taking, agendas, making the most of both physical and digital systems. The more tidy and organized your thoughts are, the easier it is to find things to pull of the shelves and blend together into something new.
Responsibility & Integrity. I’ve always been very independent and responsible, even from high school, I’d make four year plans on spreadsheets detailing all my classes, and routing different possibilities and combinations to make the best decisions. From this, being able to be confident in your decisions and taking responsibility is something I hold high value on. Your reputation and how others see you is hard won and easily lost, so being able to think through your choices and actions as much as you can, to align with your morals and maintain that integrity is something very important, that for some, can easily be swayed by the idea of money or fame. With that, feeling the burden of responsibility— partially being the eldest daughter of immigrants, with a much younger sibling, there’s always a sense of doing what is right and how to help and give back and succeed. So these ideas are very intertwined. And again, no one is perfect, so the sense of taking responsibility when you make mistakes is part of maintaining your integrity and being true to yourself while keeping others’ respect.
These skills are all really important in being a leader, both in terms of people, administrative processes and creatively. When you lead something, you’re asking for a lot of faith and respect and trust for both your team and audiences to buy in to, and that shouldn’t be taken lightly, which is why you have to work your hardest to make sure it’s a healthy workplace while creating the best final product you can.
What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?
Why not both? This reminds me of a question I would hear a lot back in college admissions. People would ask “Is it better to have all A’s in a regular level class or all B’s in an honor level class?” and the recruiters would say “All A’s in an honor level class.”
In college, once I decided I wanted to go into animation, I became an art major, because that was the area I felt the weakest in out of all the skills. I wanted the discipline and structure of formal higher education to help me improve my weakness. At the same time, I still continued leveraging my strengths within my weakness— using my resourcefulness and unconventional thinking to create art that was uniquely mine. Using my background in writing and theater to create visuals that told a story and considered things like sound and audience experience that they didn’t teach in Drawing 100.
Now, I do the same, with leading my last project, I used the leadership skills I had previously developed and my natural strengths of having a keen eye for details and aesthetics, love of research, and ability to think about processes both big picture and break them down. These supported me as I strengthened areas I had less experience developing like managing a team of that scale, resolving interpersonal conflict, the stamina and endurance of a long-form piece, and more.
I think if there’s anything you have even an inkling of interest in as a skill, it’s worth pursuing and improving. There’s no rule you can only max out a few stats, why not do them all?
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sairaumar.weebly.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_princesssaira_
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sairaumar/
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/_princessSaira_
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/sairaumar
