Alumni Profiles

01

Shirin Etessam ’84

Content and Creative Chief, Slay Agency

At thirteen years old, Shirin Etessam ’84 was among the first students to set foot in The House. When the school doors opened in September 1980, she arrived as a young 9th grader and marveled at what she saw.

“I felt I had landed either on some other planet—or in heaven,” says Shirin, who is founder and content and creative chief at Slay Agency in San Francisco. “It didn’t look like a school; it looked like a house. I had no reference for it: no bells, no lockers, and being told we were responsible for taking care of the school. There is nothing more humbling than giving a teenager a broom in front of their friends and saying, ‘No matter how cool you are you’re going to sweep the staircase.’”

Four years earlier, Shirin and her older sister and mother had moved from their home in Iran to the United States. Her parents wanted to seek a better educational experience for their eldest daughter who was thirteen at the time. Then in 1979, Shirin’s father was hired by University of Washington to teach architecture and the family moved to Seattle. Entering the public middle school in 8th grade, Shirin experienced what turned out to be a miserable year.

“It was right after of the Iran hostage crisis and as a young Iranian student I had a hard time. There was a lot of harassment and name calling. I was not happy.”

Her parents heard of a new school opening on Capitol Hill, and as soon as Shirin toured the campus she applied and got accepted.

Becoming a Creative

“Northwest felt like ‘come as you are,’” recalls Shirin. “I thought, wow, I can actually be who I am. I was very interested in theatre and, that first year, I was the youngest member of the play cast—I was really proud of that. I looked forward to coming to school and that was unusual—it had my attention.”

In Humanities classes, Shirin remembered having big philosophical discussions. “I remember reading The Dancing Wu Li Masters, by Gary Zukav, which was not typical high school reading material. The topics we covered engaged me differently than I ever had been.”

After graduating from Northwest, Shirin headed to San Francisco to pursue a degree in film with a minor in broadcasting at San Francisco State University. Though she wanted to continue acting her father worried that it wasn’t a viable profession for her. “He was worried about an Iranian girl in L.A. trying to be an actress. He encouraged me to make films instead.”

02

Digital Storytelling

In 1996, Shirin produced Walls of Sand, the first feature film to ever premier online (pre-Netflix, -Hulu, and -Amazon Prime). Later, she founded oml.tv (formerly onemorelesbian.com), which is a platform for streaming queer content. Last November, it became the first 24/7 LGBT channel in the world specifically focused on queer women.

“OML was really beautiful because it began as a passion play of mine, and now, it is a money maker. It has a huge reach: 250 million plus.”

Meanwhile, as content and creative chief at Slay Agency, Shirin helps companies define and tell their brand and product stories through various formats and channels, including video, digital, print, social, and AR/VR. Her clients have included Facebook, StubHub, Intel, ServiceNow, Virgin, RingCentral, ABC, CBS, BBC, and Discovery. Along with her team at the agency, she is currently developing a TV series, among other exciting projects.

01 Shirin Etessam, in Bodega Bay, 2020

02 Shirin (second from left), with her son

Kian (holding Maggie the Magnificent), fiancé Tracey Mason, and daughter

Iman (far right)

Parenting TikTokkers

Shirin has two children, both adopted as babies. Her son Kian, born in Guatemala, is 15 years old, and her daughter Iman, born in Ethiopia, is 13.

“They’re both ‘TikTokers,’” Shirin says, smiling. “If they want to describe something as old and passe they say, ‘Oh, that’s so 2012!’”

Shirin co-parents her children with her former partner and is now in a new relationship. She and Tracey Mason are engaged and hope to marry sometime next year.

Allowed to Flourish

At present, Shirin is embarking on yet another project. She is writing a book and designing a website that centers on self-transformation. Her ability to seek new ways of being creative and to keep learning she credits to her time at Northwest.

“I knew I was well educated but it’s the culture of the school that stands out for me. It cultivated and nurtured my creativity. I was allowed to flourish and explore. I became acutely aware of my emotional intelligence and the importance of it. That has been a huge benefit.”

After a moment of thought, Shirin adds: “I really think Northwest School made me. The school was an amazing idea that came to fruition and a lot of people really benefitted from it. I feel really lucky to be one of them.”

Dara Pressley ’89

User Experience Architect, ICF Next

01

Dara Pressley ’89 is a designer and architect. Not of brick-and-mortar buildings but of digital spaces. She designs user-friendly, human-centered websites that allow users to rapidly and smoothly find important information.

“It’s my job to ask who is coming to the website, what are they looking for, who is the priority, and how do we serve up content for each user that arrives at the doorstep?” says Dara.

Currently, Dara is the Director of User Experience at ICF Next, a global advisory and technology services provider with 7000 employees. Before ICF, she spent many years working as a consultant and as an employee in the commercial world for Fortune 500 companies, including AOL, Microsoft, and Accenture. In 2016 she decided she wanted a better quality of life and searched for a firm that would allow her to work in a remote-first environment.

“My commute had gotten really bad on the east coast— it was two hours, one way,” explains Dara, who moved back to Seattle last year with her two children, 18-yearold Fauno, and 16-year-old Zion. “I decided I should be spending my time either with work or with family, not on the road. So, my priority was to work remotely. ICF was able to meet that need.” At ICF, Dara works primarily on federal government projects as opposed to commercial. “I love the work I do now. I’m a partner and on the executive team.”

A recent favorite project was to overhaul the data site for the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. The purpose of the federal agency’s data site is to provide the public with the latest behavioral health data and statistics, as well as timely access to mental health and substance abuse trends. It is the go-to resource for policy makers, journalists, and medical professionals, and yet the site was confusing and notoriously difficult to navigate.

“You could not figure out where to go or what to do once you were on the site,” testifies Dara. She and her ICF teammates overhauled the information architecture, visual design, content, and backend architecture. “We not only solved the problem we changed what the initial ask was; we told them, ‘this is actually the problem you have,’ and we were able to solve it in less time than they had predicted. It was a fun project.”

From Writer to Designer

Dara’s path to user experience strategist has been anything but a straight line. When she headed to Scripps College in California, she thought she wanted to be a lawyer, but soon realized she wanted to be a writer. After gaining her degree in English from Scripps, she went on to Columbia College Chicago, and obtained an MFA in Writing and a MA in Teaching Writing. She was the first to obtain two master’s degrees simultaneously at Columbia. She got straight As in both.

Despite these stellar credentials she had a hard time getting a fulltime college teaching position. She started looking for writing jobs at tech companies but the tech bubble caused a series of layoffs. She then turned to freelancing, creating cradle-to-grave websites, but did not like marketing and hustling required. One day, a head hunter asked, how about user experience (also known as UX)?

“I said, what’s that? He described it and I said, well, that’s the part I actually like doing. I got my first UX job at AOL and never looked back.”

At the time, there was no degree program for user experience; people were self-taught. Dara had learned webwork and technology at home (her mother was a computer developer) and her knowledge of psychology and human behavior came from her academic pursuits. “All my training in liberal arts really helped,” confirms Dara.

In elementary school, Dara was in the public school system and had a good experience. But when she toured the public middle school, she refused to go. Her parents heard about Northwest School through a friend and took her there for a tour.

“I saw Northwest was very much a community and not about competition. I was very, very shy before coming to Northwest and a competitive environment would have just done me in.”

Starting at Northwest in 7th grade, Dara blossomed. She credits the dance program and the theatre training for her current ease at being in front of people. “In my field we do a lot of presentations,” confirms Dara. “As soon as I get in front of people now, it’s flawless.”

Learning How to Learn

Dara particularly appreciates how Northwest taught students how to think by examining both sides of an issue or historical event.

“Paul (Raymond) would come into class and say ‘Communism is the best thing ever!’ and by the time the class was over we were all ready to be communists. Then the next day, he came in and said ‘Communism is the worst thing ever!’ He was amazing,” recalls Dara, laughing.

When students complained about the heavy reading and writing workload, Paul countered that college was going be so hard so they must learn how to do this now. According to Dara, the hard work paid off.

“After Northwest, college was so-o-o easy. I saw my classmates struggling with trying to write an essay. I had been writing essays since 7th grade and term papers since 9th. The liberal arts at Northwest were outstanding. They taught us how to learn. To this day that serves me because I’m always learning something. I credit Northwest for teaching me to do that.”

01 Dara Pressley, 2021

02 An Office of Population Affairs

website, designed by Dara and her colleagues at ICF.

02

Andrew Miksys ’87

Photographer

02

Though his photographs are realistic and often have a political or social subtext, Andrew Miksys ’87 does not identify as a photojournalist. His is a fine art photographer drawn to people who live on the edges of society.

“I like people who are not in the mainstream—how they fit or create their own organic subculture,” says Andrew who grew up in Seattle but now lives in Lithuania with his wife, Ernesta, and brand-new twins born in April 2021: a daughter, Tulip, and a son, Arok.

Andrew’s photography has been shown internationally, including exhibitions at the Seattle Art Museum, Vilnius Contemporary Art Centre, Kaunas Gallery, the “Ў” Gallery of Contemporary Art in Minsk, and Maureen Paley Gallery. He has been the recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright, and the Aaron Siskind Foundation. In 2016, he was awarded the Balys Buračas Prize for Photography by the Lithuanian Cultural Ministry.

Additionally, he has published several books of his images through his publishing imprint ARÖK Books, including DISKO (2013) from his series about Lithuanian village discos, and TULIPS (2016), a book about Belarus and the political situation there. His earlier work centered on the Roma, the so-called gypsies of Lithuania.

“I choose subjects I want to learn more about and I start at zero and learn along the way. I ask some questions and leave it open,” explains Andrew. “When I’m shooting, I rely on intuition and when I see something I don’t expect I think, I don’t know what this is but I’ll figure it out. In Lithuania, I bought a cheap car and wandered around to villages, photographed a lot, then later looked and found a few images I thought I could make something out of. Then I built on those photographs.”

Finding One’s Roots

For the last fifteen years Andrew has lived in Lithuania where his family has roots; his father was born there. At the end of WWII when the Soviets moved in to occupy Lithuania, Andrew’s grandparents fled on a horse and buggy with his father who was two years old. They made their way to Germany, spent five years in a refugee camp, and then were able to come to the U.S. The trauma his father suffered took a lasting toll.

“I didn’t grow up in the Lithuanian culture,” says Andrew who attended The Northwest School in 11th and 12th grades. “At Northwest they taught Russian at the time but my dad would not let me take it. I had to take Latin. I learned about an event on Capitol Hill when they were unveiling a statue in partnership with Seattle’s sister city Tashkent (U.S.S.R.) and when my dad found out, he started yelling. He couldn’t understand why I’d want to go see it.”

Although Northwest did not have a photography program at the time, Andrew knew photography was what he wanted to do. Andrew’s father was a good amateur photographer and took all of the photos for Bingo Today, a newspaper he published in Seattle for 27 years. As a teenager, Andrew delivered the paper to bingo halls and convenience stores like 7-Eleven all over the city. Eventually, Andrew took a camera with him and started taking photos in the bingo halls.

Developing an Artist’s Sensibility

At the same time, Andrew was developing sensibilities at Northwest that would serve him as a fine art photographer.

“My classmates were from all over Seattle, all different kinds of people who were really interested in their own thing: acting, dancing, music. It was really cool to see that,” says Andrew.

At a deeper level, he was learning to be politically and socially active and to connect to community, values he is guided by today in his photo projects and in his life.

“Paul Raymond would come into class and have the New York Times, and he would teach just by talking about what he was reading and doing. He was so politically active. In 12th grade we had to work on a political campaign and Paul talked about making a decision and voting. That stuck with me my whole life. I get so excited about voting.”

Andrew names other Northwest teachers—Floyd Standifer, Mark Terry, Ellen Taussig—who made a great impression on him. “They really changed me’” confirms Andrew. “I realized I could do things with my energy and interests. Things connected.”

Getting Serious about Photography

After graduating from Northwest, Andrew headed to Hampshire College in Massachusetts for its photography and filmmaking program. There he studied history, law, and photography. Says Andrew, “That’s when I got serious.”

After college, Andrew decided he needed some life experience, so he traveled, first to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he started assisting photographers. Then he spent time in New York and ended up in New Orleans.

“I learned about a fellowship program at LSU where they would pay you to get your master’s,” says Andrew. “I got my MFA in photography and filmmaking there—I was already motivated to do my own projects; all I needed was time and space to do my work.”

Andrew received a Fulbright Fellowship and went to Lithuania for the first time. He photographed for a year then came back to LSU to teach for a year. Then he got a Guggenheim Fellowship and went back to Lithuania. There he started working on all the projects he has now made into books.

According to Andrew, self-publishing one’s work has become a great way for many artists in the last 15 years to show their work. “You are directing the way people are seeing the images through the sequencing, the design, and the way the images are placed on the page. There are these huge book fairs in New York and Los Angeles, and I sell my books through those.”

Meanwhile, Andrew’s journey as an artist has come full circle. Building on all the photos he took as a teenage delivery boy, his new book, coming out in July 2021, is titled BINGO. 01 Andrew Miksys,

at his home in

Lithuania, 2021

02 From BINGO, by

Andrew Miksys, 2021

03 From BAXT, by

Andrew Miksys, 2013

04 From DISKO, by

Andrew Miksys, 2016