CHRIS WALKER

In the fall of 2016 I had just left a job as an Administrative Assistant at a tech non-profit and was in search of more creative work. I knew Aymar vaguely from overlapping queer community and saw on Facebook that he was looking for a personal assistant. The role was to support his work at his brand new research project, Open TV - beta while he straddled launching it and his work as a professor at Northwestern University. As we talked about my background in business and my experience in event production at the Tang Museum, he realized that my background would be used more effectively  supporting Elijah in their current role as Head of Marketing and Design. Aymar suggested that since there was only a few hundred dollars he could put towards this contract, that I could supplement that income by working with Elijah doing event production. Then, Elijah was doing a lot of event production work with the AIDS Foundation of Chicago and the PrEP4Love campaign. Thus my relationship with OTV began. 

My role as social media manager involved me running the Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr pages. RIP Tumblr. Back when you could host events in person, we hosted many screenings and another part of my role was assisting with the set up, break down, and hosting at those events. There was a longterm vision for OTV that I believed in. At the same time, the contracts were nowhere near where they needed to be for me to support myself so I typically had to take on at least two additional contracts at a time to sustain myself. This usually involved working with Elijah’s consultancy, People Who Care. 

In 2019, we landed a large grant and in July of that year, I was promoted to Head of Exhibition. My role as Head of Exhibition moved away from marketing and focused on the production of our screenings and the maintenance of our app which launched that summer. That winter, when we regularly have time off, I took a contract to support the Brave Futures Film Race, an intersectional 48 hour film race, as Production Coordinator in Johannesburg and Durban, South Africa. 

In 2020, my role evolved to include Technical Direction and I produced our live streamed series #OTVTonight - in 2020 #OTVTonight was recurring - and TD’d #4theQulture, the first iteration of our annual pride event. The shape #4theQulture took in 2020 was a three day Black Pride performance-based festival.  I supported the Fall / Winter 2020 Brave Futures Film race as Technical Director as well. In January of 2021 I was promoted to Head of Marketing and Exhibition, the first full time role I have held with OTV and the first full time role I’ve had since starting here in 2016.