Employee Deep Dive — Rita Halle, Finding Creative Freedom
“I was applying to so many entry level jobs where you can’t actually get your hands dirty and my recent position at Inkitt has so much creative freedom and is so complete with what I want.”
– Rita Halle, Product Marketing Manager.
Rita Halle is a friendly and bubbly addition to the Inkitt team. Now a Product Marketing Manager, getting to this role at Inkitt involved some soul searching.
One of six children, she was shy in high school. “It was a shell I had to break out of,” she says, wishing she had come into her own earlier. “I was very focused on my studies, taking advanced classes.”
In university, in the city, she became more outgoing. She studied film with a double minor in communication and media production and analysis. “My focus was on screen writing and I really wanted to write a TV series and move to LA.”
However, rather than Los Angeles, Rita found herself in Berlin—though she was still writing.
Searching for Creative Freedom
In 2019, Rita became a scriptwriter on the writing team at Inkitt. Later, she took some time off to discover what she wanted in a career.
“I connected my identity with being a writer for such a long time and had dreams of being a screenwriter or novelist from a young age,” she says. “As a profession, I realized I didn’t have the passion for it. Working deadline to deadline, super late nights, having writer’s block; it’s a bit of a euphoric experience. My best writing was in that stressed out setting.”
She explored other kinds of writing to see what she was suited for. She wrote a TV series bible, a romantic choose-your-own-adventure game, and grant proposals. She had started to apply for copywriting jobs when Emma, Inkitt’s Chief Innovation Officer, reached out and offered her an opportunity on the marketing team. It was the creative freedom Rita was looking for.
Finding Balance with Self-Development
Now, Rita lives in Sweden with her boyfriend and seeks work-life balance as her enthusiasm for her work as a product marketing manager makes the days race by. “I could be so excited about an ad I’m making, and then the time passes by really quickly and it’s already 8pm.”
She sets aside time for herself to call her family back home in the United States, exercise, and meditate and tries to stay curious and develop her sense of identity.
“There are small rituals,” she says of her self-development goals, “such as scheduling daily meditations to check in with my stress levels and thought patterns.” She listens to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks, including one of her favourites, The Subtle Art of the Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson, or The Armchair Expert podcast, hosted by Dax Shepard and Monica Padman. For Rita, Bluetooth wireless earbuds are the greatest invention of the 21st century.
As a child she loved the Harry Potter series. Her parents were supportive of her reading habit, saying that if she could understand the first paragraph, she was allowed to read the books.
Now, she enjoys topics in social science and the work of organizational psychologist Adam Grant. “Listening to him has made me think about how I communicate with people, with others at work specifically, and accommodating different work styles. It makes me think about small ways in how I carry myself, trying to improve, and also see other people’s perspectives and communication styles.”
Reflecting on the Journey
Rita seems content with where her path has taken her. When reflecting on what life in Los Angeles as a screenwriter might have been like, she muses, “I don’t know if I still want this anymore, as I don’t align to this lifestyle currently. Whatever path you choose, you have to be in love with the struggle. I wasn’t in love with that struggle.”
“I was applying to so many entry level jobs where you can’t actually get your hands dirty,” she says, “and my recent position at Inkitt has so much creative freedom and is so complete with what I want.”
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