Career Tech Alumni Spotlight: Christopher Flanery, Stebbins

Name: Christopher Flanery

Education: 2008 Stebbins High School graduate and Career Tech Program: Visual Design & Imaging graduate

High School Activities: Visual Design and Imaging Career Tech program, soccer, yearbook, and LinkCrew

Education & Current Employer: Flanery graduated magna cum laude with his bachelor of fine arts in motion picture production from Wright State University in June 2012. He is currently employed as a videographer and editor for PBS in Lincoln, Nebraska. Previously to his employment at PBS, Flanery was a videographer and editor for LexisNexis in Dayton, a videographer and editor for WonderGrove Kids in Los Angeles, California, and a freelance camera operator (shooting for ESPN, the Dayton Dragons, AMA Pro Racing, and Ohio Sports Television to name a few).

His Story: Flanery said he believes his experience in the Visual Design & Imaging Career Tech program laid a solid foundation for his career path. "Having an opportunity in high school to shoot and edit video and photos, build webpages and do graphic design in industry standard programs and then move on to the workforce and see those programs in action was unbelievable," he said. "It has been a huge relief and confidence booster to be able to say— hey I know that!"

Flanery said now that he is actually working in the industry he can definitely say his experience at Stebbins and in Visual Design & Imaging was invaluable.

“To get that sort of industry exposure and experience as a 16-17-year-old kid, that’s life-changing,” he said.

Flanery goes on to say that while the actual experience of taking a career technical program in high school was huge, he thinks having his instructor, Steve Amlin and being able to use him as a resource was even bigger.

“I honestly don’t think that I would be where I am today (my dream job) without my Visual Design & Imaging Career Tech program and Mr. Amlin’s guidance,” he said.

From time to time, Flanery said he thinks back on how he really got started and it always comes back to taking Visual Design & Imaging at Stebbins as the foundation for his future. He said he feels that his Career Tech classes allowed him to leave high school with a lead over other college students who weren’t in a Visual Design & Imaging program.

“It all comes back to getting real-world hands-on experience at a young age with the tools, equipment and software the industry is currently using,” Flanery said.

Future Aspirations: Flanery works for Nebraska PBS, but he is technically a University of Nebraska employee. As a result, he will able to get his master's degree in education for free. At some point, further on down the road, he said he would love to do what Amlin does and teach a high school career technical program. Flanery said he would also like to win a regional Emmy, and he plans on buying a drone to pursue drone videography.

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