Work Transition Stories: Sharon Mizota

Sharon Mizota and I worked on an inclusive taxonomy together during my time at Netflix, and I have always been fascinated by her background and brilliance. In this interview, Sharon traces her evolution from graphic designer to archivist to independent DEI metadata consultant, revealing how these seemingly disparate paths have converged in her current focus on research and writing. 

Beginning in New York City design agencies during the early internet era and moving through institutions like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Walt Disney Animation Studios, her story illustrates how professional pivots can lead to more fulfilling work when guided by personal values and a willingness to experiment. Sharon's journey offers practical advice for anyone contemplating career transitions: follow your curiosities, prepare financially, and recognize that your varied experiences can ultimately braid together into something uniquely valuable.

Below is the transcript of my conversation with Sabrina, edited for clarity by the wonderful Samantha Cooper:

SAM:
Hi Sharon, nice to see you.

SHARON:
Good to see you too. Thanks for having me.

SAM:
Thanks for doing this. I'm going to jump right in with a little context of how we know each other. We worked together on a project at Netflix focused on inclusive taxonomy a few years ago now? Maybe four years ago? And we have lots of other connections in common through the Information and Library Science World. But I want to talk to you about your whole career journey today, because when we met, it was a very particular point for both of us in our careers. So, I'm just going to start us off with a question about the very first career you had into the second career you had—which was that you started out as a designer, and then you transitioned into libraries and archives with corporations. And I want to hear a little bit about that transition and how that feels to you now, in the rearview.

SHARON:
The transition from designer to libraries and archives. So I never intended to be a designer. I'll just say that first off. I went to art school, and it was an easy way to make money when the internet was just taking off. So, I don't consider myself a dyed-in-the-wool designer. So, I guess it wasn't really my first choice career. But it took off, and that was great. For a while. And then I realized that I wasn't enjoying very much of what I was doing anymore. The role got much smaller. When the internet was young, you did Information Architecture, you did usability, you did all of these things in addition to graphic design. And as I matured in my career, my role actually got much smaller, and I was just doing the graphic design part of things. And there were other people who were doing the IA and the usability and working with clients and doing all of that other stuff, which I guess is the way industries go. But I realized that I wasn't very happy just doing the graphic—just making things look pretty, which wasn't everything. But anyway. 

So, I got kind of disenchanted with design. And started looking around like, what else could I do? I missed doing the information architecture piece. I missed structuring the websites that I was working on. And so I was looking—I knew some of the folks who did that work had Library Science degrees. I had a friend who was an artist, actually, but had recently started working in a library, and was so inspired that she decided to go back to school and get her Library degree. And I was like, “Huh, so I guess that's something you can do.”

I did speak with a career coach at that time who told me not to do that, not to go back to school. Because she was like, “There has to be a way that you can evolve your design career in a direction that is more compatible with what you actually want to be doing.” I thought at the time, I wanted to get more involved in the art world, again. I was doing some art writing on the side. And she's like, “Maybe you could design websites for galleries.” And I was like, “That sounds like the worst job ever.” I didn't want to be a web designer for artists or a web designer for art galleries.

My husband got a job that required us to relocate. And so I was like, “Okay, this is a chance—I'm leaving my well-paid design job.” I was working at Apple, like, for a designer, you can’t really do much better than that. And I'm like, “Okay, I'm just gonna see what happens now.” And decided to go back to school in Library Science, and not—I didn't even know—I got in my first Library class, like, what is the difference between a library and an archive? I had no idea. I was totally naive about all this, and fell in love with archives and working with primary source materials, which was not what I intended to do at all. I thought...I don't know. I thought I could do more information design work in the cultural heritage side, which seemed more interesting to me than marketing and...

I just really was intrigued by archives, and kind of ended up working as an archivist. My first job was a part-time job. It paid less than $25,000 a year. It was dismal. I was like, “Oh, what have I done?” [laughs] So, that was sobering. But I kept reminding myself: I didn't get into this to make money. I'm ultimately looking for something that is just a more satisfying, value-aligned way to work or way to operate in the world. I don’t know if that answers your question.

SAM:
It does. And it's fascinating that the coach advised you to not go back to school, because that's where I lean as well. Which I think is extremely ironic, since I went back and got a Masters in Information and Library Science. But I will say that I have a client right now who thought that was what she maybe should do, was go get a MLAS, and she's decided not to. And not because I told her not to. But because she decided there were other ways to do the things you wanted to do. So either is valid. And it sounds like it set you on an unexpected path. You knew that you wanted to get more education in the information side, but where exactly that was going to lead was up in the air.

SHARON:
Yeah. I had no idea. I had done some volunteer work at a poster archive, a political poster archive here in L.A. and I was like, “Oh. This is a way to work with art objects without being a curator, without having to get a PhD, or be a subject matter expert.” You could work with a lot of different kinds of artworks, ideas, information. And I was like, “I kind of love doing this.” I love this generalist aspect of things. And it would also allow me to continue doing art writing on the side, because it's not a conflict of interest to be an archivist in the art world and also write about art.

I felt like if I had been a curator or worked in a gallery or done something that was more materially about art presentation and interpretation, that that might be a conflict with being an art critic and being able to say whatever I wanted about artworks. And that has always been, for most of my career, something that I've done on the side, and I've never really been able to make that a big part of my compensation pie, I guess. But it's always been something that sustained me, intellectually and spiritually in some ways.

SAM:
Okay, so walk me through the next stage. You've gotten this—you've gotten into archives. And then what type of archives do you end up working for? And then how do you get to the point where you're at today, of working for yourself?

SHARON:
So the first archives job, that part-time job that I was talking about, that I got while I was still in school, was at the Motion Picture Academy, the Oscars people here in Los Angeles. I was working with marketing material, marketing materials from the movies. So, visual arts-related materials. I started out working with posters. So, movie posters, both historic and contemporary. And then moved over to working with production art—that's any art that's created in the process of making a film—set design drawings, costume design drawings, all kinds of weird byproducts of the filmmaking process. And that was really fascinating.

I was there for six years, but the commute—we had moved to South Pasadena for the schools. The schools were better here, and the commute was just killing me. I was commuting in the car 10 hours a week in traffic. And I was like, “I just can't do this long. This is not sustainable.” So I was looking around. It was really hard to find another archives job—the job market, this was around 2013, I think—I thought “I'll go to archive school and the economy will recover by the time I'm out.” But that didn't really happen. 

The part-time job turned into a full-time job, which was great. I was there for six years. And then I started looking around, and because I was in this highly specialized archive, which I didn't really realize when I got in there, I was not competitive for other more general archives jobs. I thought, “I'd be great to work at a university or a small college or some place where there's a wide variety of different kinds of archival collections.” But because I was so focused in film, and because I was so focused in visual art, I would never even get an interview for those positions, even though I had a good amount of experience.

So, this opening came up at the Walt Disney Animation Research Library. I knew some folks there. I had been to the facility before on a tour or something. So I was like, “Okay, I'll apply for this.” And I got it, and then became a corporate archivist, which I didn't really think about at the time. I was like, “Well, this is the job that I can get. It's closer to home. My commute will be easier.” I had a small child at the time, so it made my life easier. And I didn't really think about it being a corporate archive. I was like, “This is everybody's childhood. All the animation artwork from all the great Disney animated films is here. That's amazing.”

But there were certain—it's different being in a corporate archives—even the Motion Picture Academy was a specialized archive, but it was a nonprofit. It was open to the public. It had these more outward-facing obligations and responsibilities that a corporate archive doesn't have. They exist to serve the company and to serve the interests of the company. And while that was fine—I was there from 2017 to 2020—that was fine until it wasn't fine.

And 2020, when the pandemic hit, that's when I realized, “Oh, this is not the company that I thought it was.” And I know everybody was freaking out in that moment. It was really hard to know, nobody knew what was going to happen. But the way that they handled it was not super family-friendly, or even health-friendly. So I was like, “Eh, this is not great.” They furloughed us for three months, and then they wanted us to come back in July of 2020, when there was no vaccine for the vast majority of people and the Delta variation was spiking, and there was no option. It was go back. Or...

...so I went back, but the wheels start turning. Like,”What am I really doing here? Is this aligned with the values that I thought I had?” Later, by that fall, I was like, “Okay, I have to...get out of here.” But there weren't a lot of opportunities out there. And I had been doing a lot of DEI-related work the whole time I was there. At both archives jobs, actually, because that is something that's very rooted in my experience and in my history. From the time I was in college, I've always been engaged with Asian American Studies and aware of the darker aspects of our history as a country, and most of the institutions that we all operate within.

I was seeing because of Black Lives Matter, and all of the unrest and protests that were happening in 2020 that there was this turning towards wanting to be more inclusive and be more politically engaged in the work that we did in archives in general. And I thought, “Well, maybe there's something there that people will need help with. That there's some opportunity there.” And then I turned 50, and a dear aunt of mine passed away, and I was like, “if I'm not going to do it now. Like, when am I going to—Life is short—there's—”...It seemed much more urgent.

So, I quit and decided that I was going to be a DEI metadata consultant, which I worked with a career coach, because I didn't know what that was. I was like, “I want to do this thing that's like, has metadata, but is related to representation and equity and making sure that people feel included in these spaces in archives and libraries. But it isn't about patron relations or it's not about HR or hiring. It's about metadata. It's about the data—the way things are represented in catalogs.” I'm like, “Is that—do people even do that? Is that even a thing?” And this career coach—the same one—no, this was a different one. Sorry, my second career coach was like, “I think you're a DEI metadata consultant.” She was like, “Just say that.” I was like, “Okay.” And tried to come up with a definition of what that is, my elevator pitch.

I still don't have a super successful elevator pitch, because unless you're already in libraries and archives, people don't know what metadata is. You have to explain metadata, and then you have to explain—"Oh no, I don't do all metadata. I'm just in this little narrow pocket of inclusive metadata," which is what I call it now. DEI is still fine, but there's been some backlash, and now it's whatever. It's a little confusing, like, exactly what to call it.

So, I've been in that niche now for about four, five years, and it has sustained me—there has been work. But I'm kind of in my next pivot right now, and I know you'll probably get to that. 

SAM:
Go ahead. What’s that one?

SHARON:
I'm moving away, actually, from those metadata projects, which have dried up because people have to tighten their belts right and left. We're losing funding, and the mechanisms by which people receive funding and the funding itself, and so in this very frustrating moment, there isn't a lot of bandwidth or money for the kinds of projects that I was getting in the first few years that I was out on my own.

So, I've pivoted to doing research and writing, which has brought the art writing part back in some ways. I recently completed two pretty big reports. One in the Library and Archives space about community-based organizations and their access to sharing their archives online. And the other is a study of the conditions and challenges facing cultural critics of color in the United States, which is more about the art critic side of things, and not so much about Libraries and Archives. But that's been a really rewarding and interesting process doing qualitative research and reporting on what we found. Working with a small team of folks to do that. I'm really enjoying that, and looking for more work in that area.

SAM:
That's great. It sounds like you've merged multiple interests into one area now. Like research, I'm sure, is a part of your archivist work over the years. Metadata is something you can do research on, but aren't necessarily creating the metadata at this point. Like you’ve found this new version where all of these things are relevant, all of your skills get to be used, but in a new shape, basically.

SHARON:
Yeah. And you helped me with this as well. When I was like, “I've got these three different strands of the work I do. How do I braid them together? And not look like I'm split in all these different directions.” And so the work that you did with me on my website really helped me to understand what are the points of similarity between those things. Like what you just said, in terms of being able to leverage experiences from very different fields of activity into one value proposition or one direction, so that I'm basically all about appropriate, respectful representation wherever that happens to fall, whether it's in metadata, whether it's in a report, whether it's in a review of a art exhibition, or any other form of writing. It's all about representation. And really working with you helped me understand that that was the core idea that all of these other activities come out of, or come form a circle around.

SAM:
Thank you for that acknowledgement.

Yeah, and it's so funny to me that—and this is the case so often, where who we are as people is so or what we do is so hard to express externally, even though you are, of course, a mix of all those things. And of course, whatever you do is going to have all those things. 

So, given all of those various fields that you've worked in or applications of your expertise that you've worked in, are there any unexpected challenges or advantages you ran into of moving through those?

SHARON:
One of the things I've been thinking about a little bit lately is being an archivist and coming from an art background—an art making background specifically—a design, but also art making—a maker background is very different from the training that some of my colleagues had and the way that they approach things. So I think having that background has made me more open to experimentation and to just trying things—to iterative work, to "let's just do this and see how it goes. Then what we'll learn from it, we'll feed that back into." And I know this is agile or whatever. There's all kinds of words for the ways in which people work right now, like sprints and that kind of stuff.

SAM:
Well, and it sounds like that experimentation-leaning has served you both in the macro and the micro, because at a macro level, you've done that a little bit with your career, like you've been open to trying something else. But some people really get frozen by and can't lean into that experiment, or see the opportunity to experiment in a situation where they're feeling stuck. And then you also do it in your work, which was something that I really appreciated when we worked together, because we were doing something around inclusion, which can make people want to get it perfect. And actually you need to just try something. So the fact that you're applying that to inclusion, especially, I think really resonates for me as a bonus, or a thing that makes you really good at it, that is really hard for people to do. So like, be okay with trying an experiment and maybe not getting it quite right and then adjusting and doing it again.

SHARON:
Yeah. And I've gotten it not right so many times, and in sometimes very embarrassing ways. But that's just part of this work, because as one person, you can't really know what everybody needs. I mean, yes, you can research, but we all are still victims of our history, our personal history. And so we see things a certain way, and there's outsides of that that we haven't really yet considered or even know about. And so I think there's this continual need to acknowledge that, “This is what I'm proposing at this moment, from my perspective, but I have no idea if that's the right thing.” And that's hard, especially as a consultant, because people hire you to know stuff. Or to go and find it out. And I certainly will do that, but I'm still limited in what I can find out or how I think about things, and so it is challenging to have to sell yourself as the expert, but then realize that maybe the thing that I'm expert in isn't exactly the answer to your problem, but it is the way to get to that solution. So, I know how to walk you through this process that will end up somewhere that neither of us anticipated.

SAM:
Yes. You know how to ask the right questions and try the right experiments to get to an outcome that they're looking for and to get to more information. 

So, we've covered your various transitions and how experimentation has been a key point of that. What advice do you have for others who are considering or in the middle of a transition?

SHARON:
I mean, I think it's—don't be afraid to try stuff. This is all gonna sound very formulaic, I guess, but if you even have an inkling that you might be interested in something, follow that. Pay attention to what gets you excited, or what's interesting. And it may turn out to be a new career. It may turn out to be a side hustle. It may turn out to be a hobby, but pay attention to what’s capturing your interest in the moment, and don't be too hung up on titles or boundaries—the restrictions of your role, or what role you envision yourself in. Because, DEI Metadata Consultant is kind of still not a thing, but I've been doing it for a few years now, and it's been okay. I made more money than I made as an archivist. I work way less. I have a lot more flexibility. Can travel—it's worked out. I mean, I've also been lucky, and I have a lot of support outside of work. I'm very privileged in that respect, but really happy that I made this transition. Because it can feel like you're in a dead end job. And I'm not saying that I will never be back there, but it was very affirming to leave and still be solvent.

SAM:
Right, to know that you have some control over your life and success and all of those things. Those are excellent pieces of advice. I love the “put some words together.” This is oversimplifying, but the “put some words together, and that can be a job.” Especially if you can make it a job, or you can find other jobs that are close to that, that have different words on them, but that string of thoughts and preferences became a real thing.

SHARON:
I do want to add one thing, though, about going out on your own. I was able to do that because the first job I took—well, there's two things. The first job I took was a super boring metadata cleanup job. That was a contract position. It was three months. And it was really super dull, just cleaning metadata all day long. But that's what got me out of the corporate job and able to then have more flexibility working from home, to figure out what the next step was going to be, and what this DEI metadata thing was. That gave me a cushion. 

And then the other thing is that I had freelanced before. Both as a writer and as a designer, I had had periods in my career where I had to freelance, and so I knew how to do contracts, and I knew how to do tax stuff—you’ve got to figure all of that stuff out too before you go off on your own, because otherwise, you'll end up not having enough money to pay your taxes at the end of the year, not realizing that you had to be paying estimated tax—all of the logistical stuff. I already knew how to do that. I figured I made all those mistakes before, and so I think that that really facilitated the transition. It was like, “Okay, I know what I'm getting into when I do this.” It wasn't just like, "I'm going to be a consultant now." I knew more or less what I was getting into from all the logistical, financial aspects of it.

SAM:
Right. So people should be aware that there is a cushion needed and logistics need to be known to be able to do that leap, that particular type of leap.

SHARON:
And if you don't have a spouse with a full-time job and health insurance, you also need to get that stuff figured out. Or have savings banked so that you can have that time to transition.

SAM:
There are so many other factors around these things. In retrospect, you can say as a sentence, but really, you know, I made the leap from A to B with 1000 other things that had to be perfect for that to be possible.

SHARON:
Right. So, I don't want people to come away from this conversation thinking that, "Oh, I can just leave my full-time gig and..."

SAM:
"...Sharon will pay my rent." [laughs] She sounds helpful. I bet she'll do it. 

So, you've said that you've started doing this research work. What's on the horizon in that area that you're most excited about?

SHARON:
I want to do more of the research work if I can. And I'm fortunate that the work that I did was funded by private foundations. So, I’m looking a little bit more into that—trying to get to know that space, a little bit more—the private philanthropy space, just to see what is needed there.

And then the other thing I want to do is—this last fall, I worked on an essay about this Japanese American artist based in Idaho. I was commissioned by his family to write about his work. He was active mostly at mid-century and he's passed on now, but he had never really been historicized. And so this was original research, archival research. It's the first time that I wrote something of this length. It turned out to be like an 8000-word essay, life history, but also looking at his work and trying to interpret his work and place it within an art historical context.

SAM:
What question do you wish more people would ask you about your work?

SHARON:
I saw this on your list, and I don't know. I'm sorry.

SAM:
That’s okay. You can be like "I don’t want anyone to ask me any questions."

SHARON:
I mean, I think—this is something that I'm hoping to write about in the future, is the relationship between the art writing and metadata or archival description. That's something I wish people saw more of a connection between and maybe ask me about because I do feel like there's something there that is unexpected or interesting to think about.

I think as a researcher this has become more obvious to me, when I write about an art exhibition, and particularly because art exhibitions are often very local—you can't see it if you're not in the place where it's happening, or you can see it in an Instagram way, but not in a visceral way. So, I am creating a form of metadata when I write about it. I mean, I guess you could say it's just data, but it is about this thing. It is in relation to this exhibition or this artwork that I saw. I think that if we can think about there's—it goes both ways. If we could think about this kind of documentation as metadata, as a historicizing of what's happening—it's not just "was this show good or bad," but I'm actually entering it into the historical record when I publish something about it. And then also being able to think about our metadata as a more creative, personal response to whatever it is we're describing, because that's really what it is.

Yes, we're supposed to use controlled vocabularies, and we're supposed to use certain conventions of how we describe things. But especially when you're describing a visual work, there's no way you can encompass everything that anybody might see in that work. You are giving your subjective impression of what's important in that work when you describe it. And that's very similar to what art critics do. I think that's something that I would like to talk more about with people in both fields.

Yeah, that nobody's ever asked me about that.

SAM:
Well, I will be asking you more about it in the future, because I would like to hear more about that personally. And it feels like there's a lot of overlap between your interest areas, overlaps and expertise with Dominique, who I spoke to earlier in the series, thanks to your recommendation and introduction. So, I see a lot of parallels there in terms of things that are top of mind and that you are continuing to push in the ways that you can in your work.

SHARON:
Oh yeah, I love Dominique. Absolutely. So, I haven't seen her in a while. I need to catch up with her.

SAM:
Yeah, she's great. Anything else you want to tell people about transitions?

SHARON:
I mean, I guess just don't be afraid of them. Nothing lasts forever. So, you just gotta, I know sometimes they're not of your choosing, and that can be painful, but there's always a silver lining, and there's going to be things that surprise you or that you didn't expect, that can be quite delightful as well as challenging.

SAM:
That's a very even place to land, especially these days we need some optimism and reality at the same time, which is awesome. Well, thank you so much for having this conversation with me, Sharon.

SHARON:
Thank you for asking. It was really fun.

SAM:
All right, have a good day. 

SHARON:
You too. 

SAM:
Bye.