Dana Fahey Valdes has joined Grey as executive director, creative talent. She will report to John Patroulis, Grey’s worldwide chief creative officer and be based at Grey’s New York flagship office.
In her new post, Valdes will lead Grey’s growing creative management team which includes creative recruitment, resource management and creative culture initiatives.
Patroulis said, “Dana brings a tremendous track record of success in building creative organizations. She will help us continue to attract the best talent in the world, give the great talent we possess more ownership over their ideas and create the environment and expectation for everyone to do the best work of their careers.”
Valdes brings more than 15 years of experience recruiting top talent, advocating for creative and helping to balance business demands with creative goals. Her experience spans both world-class networks and creative hot-shop start-ups. She has worked at CP+B, TBWAChiatDay, Barton F. Graf, Saatchi & Saatchi and F&P. In 2013, she co-founded and ran her own independent creative recruiting company in New York, building relationships and placing international talent.
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More