Running to the Noise, Episode 25

What does it take to get your talent noticed today? How do you sell your skills without selling out? In this wide-ranging and practical conversation on Running to the Noise, Oberlin President Carmen Twillie Ambar brings together three young multihyphenate alums navigating today’s volatile creative economy: Tamara Jade ’12 (The Voice, HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show), EJ Marcus ’19 (comic and staff writer on HBO’s I Love LA), and Seyquan Mack ’21 (model, vocalist, and teaching artist).

They talk candidly about what it takes to build momentum in saturated industries where talent alone is no longer enough. From opera stages and writers’ rooms to TikTok feeds and global ad campaigns, each guest traces how discipline, adaptability, and self-belief shaped their paths, and why visibility now plays a role alongside craft.

But this episode goes deeper than career advice. It’s also a conversation about survival, agency, and belonging. The guests reflect on money, burnout, rejection, and the pressure to attract online followers, while making a powerful case for community over hyper-individualism. They explore what it means to pivot without losing your center, to use social platforms without being consumed by them, and to create work that still feels honest in a metrics-driven world.

At its heart, this is a conversation about running toward uncertainty instead of away from it, about turning discomfort into momentum, and noise into opportunity.

What We Cover in this Episode

• Why multihyphenate careers are becoming the norm in creative industries
• How opera training builds transferable discipline for other art forms
• The role of social media and visibility in getting hired, and how to stay authentic
• What “pivoting” really looks like when industries shift or work dries up
• Why community matters more than resilience alone
• How to think about money, stability, and creative freedom at the same time
• What it means to “run to the noise” as an artist in an uncertain world