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When Celia – then Hubbard, now Ryan – started as a production assistant at Open Road in 2013, she was assigned to take everyone’s lunch orders. Instead of seeing that as a task that was beneath her, she saw it as an opportunity. In the 60 seconds or so that it took to find out what everyone wanted to eat, she also learned a bit about the person and what they were working on. That quickly brought her to the office of Lon Moeller, co-owner and president at Open Road.

Moeller soon recognized that he had found a fellow passionate soul among his ranks and took her under his wing. In the 12 years that followed, Ryan continued to work hard, impress and take advantage of any opportunity. Last month, she was promoted to principal and executive creative director at the Los Angeles-based agency.

Just days before she was due to give birth to her second child, a daughter, Ryan jumped on a Zoom with Spotlight to share her story. 

‍Spotlight: How did you get your start in entertainment marketing? 

‍Celia Hubbard Ryan, principal, executive creative director, Open Road: It's funny because people will ask me, ‘Where were you before Open Road? And I am like, ‘I was at college.’ I went to Boston University and ended up doing their BU in LA program.. I interned at Fremantle and at MTV as part of a college program. 

I interned in the development departments, and it was really interesting. I realized that I love TV, but I definitely didn't want to work in development. That was just not for me. 

‍Spotlight: Why? I feel like everybody wants to work in development. 

‍Ryan: My dad was an editor. He cut commercials, and my mom was a producer. I always felt like I wanted to work in TV, but I really wanted to work in post production. I did not want to be on a set. I wanted to work on shows, but I  didn't want to work on just one show. I had a family friend, Jim Frederick, who worked at Warner Brothers. We went to lunch, and I was telling him my wish list of what I wanted to do. He was the one who said, ‘you’ve got to work at an agency. You should work in trailers.’ I had no idea that was a thing that you could do. He introduced me to Jeff Smith, who was the owner of Open Road at the time.

I interviewed at the beginning of the summer while I was working at J. Crew. Jeff said, ‘I don't have a job for you now, but I will in a couple of months.’ He kept calling once a month to see if I had a job. And then in September, I got the job at Open Road as a PA. I looked at it as boot camp for agency life. 

One of the things that ended up being the most beneficial was that my job was to take everyone's lunch orders. I would go from office to office, and I had about 60 seconds to meet people and find out what they were working on while I was getting their lunch orders. That's actually how I ended up meeting Lon [Moeller, co-owner, co-chief creative officer, Open Road]. He’s been my mentor for the whole time I've been at Open Road. When I walked into his office, he had all of the shows that I watched on The CW on his walls and he was the TV guy. I was like, this is the person that I need to talk to.

‍Spotlight: How did you move beyond taking everyone’s lunch orders? 

‍Ryan: I saw that they had gotten a project that was going to be on E!.  I went to Lon and said ‘I love every show on E!. If there's anything I can do to help or be more involved, please let me know.’ And he said, ‘great. They just sent us 30,000 production stills, and they want us to do something with them. Can you go through them and let me know if you have any ideas?’ I pitched him a spot, and he let me produce it.

‍Spotlight: Oh, wow. Did it air?

Ryan:  Yes, it finished, and they ended up requesting a bunch more. It was funny, because I was producing the spot with this editor, and then I would have to leave and do the lunch order. 

I was still a PA, but when my shift was over, I would stay and work with Lon and Alex, who was the producer at the time. They eventually promoted me to coordinator, and from then on, I got to be part of the team, and it was awesome.

‍Spotlight: As a creative director and now ECD and principal, what does that mean you do?

‍Ryan: Executive creative director speaks to the creative part of my job, which is working with clients and working with our team to create AV and marketing materials for  theatrical, streaming and TV campaigns. Principal speaks to working on the management side of the company, and getting to be involved with the leadership of the company.

‍Spotlight: What would you say you've learned about leadership along the way?

‍Ryan: I have learned a lot about leadership from Lon. He’s very positive and inspirational. On my first contract, he included as one of the clauses, ‘have fun, be passionate and inspire others to create amazing work.’ I think that’s been my leadership motto throughout my career. It’s my job to inspire the people I work with to bring their best work to the table. I think there’s so much involved with trusting your team but also being the person that they can come to and figure things out. That’s been something I always appreciated about Lon – we could always talk about what the next step was and figure out something together. That’s made me a stronger leader. I always want my team to be able to come to me when they have concerns or ideas. I really look for opportunities to elevate others around me. 

‍Spotlight: What do you think that creative teams in particular need from their leaders?

‍Ryan: Leading creative teams is all based around trust and opportunity. There's no growth without those two things. I certainly wouldn't have grown if I wasn't given the opportunity to go produce a spot or be trusted to lead a project, but I also always knew I was backed by a great team. 

We want everyone to succeed here and we work closely together to make sure that happens. If there’s an opportunity to have someone lead something that they’re passionate about, I want them to be able to do it. I want to have the people who are most excited about the project working on it, while still having the comfort and support of knowing that they have people behind them who are going to make sure that we’re all doing a great job. 

It's very collaborative. The attitude is to work together rather than be competitive with each other. There are projects that I bring other people into because I know they would be perfect for the project. It's less about, ‘I have to do this’ and more about delivering the best thing I can to the client.

‍Spotlight: In your role as ECD, how much time would you say you spend interfacing with clients? And assuming that’s a decent percentage of your time, what would you say are some keys to maintaining great client relationships ?

‍Ryan: I would say a majority of my job is working directly with clients.

For me, I think it's just remaining authentic. I think the goal of our team has always been to be the team that the client feels comfortable picking up the phone and calling. Some of the best compliments I've been given during my career are ‘I came out of the meeting and I was so stressed about these notes, and then I called you, and you made me feel better.’ That genuinely means so much to me. I want to be the troubleshooter who is coming to the table with good ideas and fixes. A lot of that for me is forming authentic relationships. I've made so many friends in this industry, people who have started as clients and have become really close friends. It just makes the creative process so much more fun when we're working together. And I know them, and they know me, and they know our team, and they just know that they're in really good hands.

‍Spotlight: If you have to have a difficult conversation with a client, how do you manage it? 

‍Ryan: Everybody has different working styles, and it's my job to figure out what is going to work best for that person. Lots of clients work in different ways, and I find it's best not to be rigid in the way that I need to do things. I'm always open to feedback. If there's a way that my team can be doing something to make a client’s life easier, then we absolutely want to do it. I think you have to leave your ego at the door and be open to different ways of doing things. 

‍Spotlight: How did you react to getting this promotion at this time in your life? 

‍Ryan: I'm not sure why they decided now was the time to promote me but they've been giving me lots of opportunities to be a leader in the company and be a leader on my team. The thing I have appreciated about this promotion is that Lon, Alan [Baral, co-owner and CEO] and Michelle [Jackino, principal and co-chief creative officer] made it official nine days before I was going on maternity leave. I know so many women who have been passed up for opportunities when starting their families or have had their career growth put on hold. Getting this promotion right before maternity leave meant so much to me and speaks volumes about the leadership at Open Road. I actually said, ‘you guys, is this okay?’ But they were like, ‘we didn't want to wait. You are ready to step into the role, and you can step in for nine days, and then you can step back  in when you come back.’ 

‍Spotlight: What advice do you give to young women as they come up in this industry, and especially if they have similar goals to yours, like they want to be moms, for example?

‍Ryan: I feel like my advice is to work hard and be passionate. Be authentic about what you're doing. I think my passion was really what got me the opportunity to produce my first spot. If I hadn't expressed that interest and been willing to go above and beyond and try something that wasn't exactly my job description, then I wouldn't be where I am now. 

I also think people should always look for the opportunity. Being a PA and doing lunch orders was not the most exciting thing, but looking at it as 60 seconds to learn about the different people I worked with turned that into a great opportunity. I could have easily gone in there and been like ‘what do you want for lunch? Cool. Bye.’ But looking for those opportunities and being creative about them, I think can take you far. 

I also always invite other women to join Soapbox Women to find more connection in the industry! Soapbox has been such a great way to meet other women in entertainment marketing and it has introduced me to so many working moms.

‍Spotlight: Is there anything you've worked on at Open Road lately that you'd like to mention?

‍Ryan: Yes, I got to work on the Freakier Friday campaign with Disney, and it was a job that I specifically reached out about to the client, Lauren Wright. Freaky Friday, the original, was one of my favorite, favorite, favorite movies. I work on a team with a lot of millennials on it, and so this project was a dream come true for us. Every minute of being on that campaign, we had so much fun. And not to be super corny, but it's a mother-daughter comedy, and so to also be pregnant and growing my daughter while working on the campaign was pretty special. We got to work on everything from the trailer to the TV campaign to social spots and radio, and we had the best time.

That’s one of the things I love about this job and also the people I work with is that Open Road really gets trusted with a diverse range of genres. I'm always getting challenged to think in different ways. 

I also worked on Sirens for Netflix and Pulisic, which is a docu series for Paramount Plus about soccer player Christian Pulisic. I just worked on Love Thy Nader for Hulu and Freeform; I got to work on The Kardashians for Hulu and the trailer for Everything’s Going to be Great with Lionsgate. When you look at all of that, I just feel super lucky to be able to work on so many different genres. 

‍Spotlight: OK, last question. What do you have coming up next that you can talk about? 

‍Ryan: My next project is this baby! I'll be working a lot of OT at night.