Did you love puppets growing up? When I was a child, our family would regularly watch The Ed Sullivan Show, where the Muppets made regular appearances. After most performances, Muppet creator Jim Henson would walk out onto the stage and shake Ed Sullivan’s hand. But I didn’t really care about that guy who looked like a hippie. I just wanted to see the Muppets! Then one day after a performance, Jim Henson walked out to greet Ed Sullivan—but he still had Kermit on his hand.

Something happened to me at that moment that I can never find words big enough to describe. I was catapulted into a place I had never been before. I thought to myself, “You mean a man was doing that?!” I was six years old and never thought about how the cartoons and puppet shows were made. I plunged into the life I was about to build from that moment forward.

How did your career start at Sesame Street? By the time I got to college, I started thinking about working for Jim Henson, maybe even on Sesame Street. I reached out to my painting and illustration teacher, who was my college hero, to see if he might have some advice. He certainly did.

“I believe in you, but you need to bring your goals down to where you can reach them,” he said. This really destroyed me. But my beautiful mother set me straight. “Why are you listening to him? If they don’t want you, let them tell you that—not someone who doesn’t even work there!” she said.

Once I got up enough nerve, I started reaching out to the Jim Henson Company with my portfolio of drawings. After trying every couple of weeks for eight months, then weekly for the last month, I had a phone call from my soon-to-be mentor, Jim Mahon. I couldn’t believe my ears! I went in the next day and started my freelance—and later full-time—career at Sesame Workshop, which produces Sesame Street. To know that I am the creative director of character design for the show that Jim Henson considered his most important work… the best word I can say is grateful.

I went back to my college to find that teacher to tell him he needed to stop telling young people, or anyone for that matter, that they could not achieve their dreams. I never found him, but I just let it go and decided to encourage anyone who came to me to believe in their dreams.

What are your responsibilities as the creative director of character design for Sesame Workshop? I create and art direct many forms of artwork of the Sesame Street Muppets. Whenever a strange or really unusual project comes to our department, I am usually the one who gets it. For instance, I have designed the Big Bird and Super Grover Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons as well as the float where the puppets and human cast all ride and wave from.

I am also the director of photography. I work with John Barrett, the photographer Jim Henson chose to be the Muppet photographer. It is such an honor to work with that brilliant man and lean on his expertise and legacy relationship with the Muppets. What I do is pose the puppets in what I call a “still performance.” I have to know each and every character as well as the actors who perform them on the show. So I get to be with every one of them, and I truly love them all. When I was a kid, I loved Gumby and didn’t realize that playing with that bendable character was actually training for this great photography work I am now involved in!

I just love this work because of who we do it for—the children of the world. Our mission is to help them grow smarter, stronger and kinder. I am so proud of how we have actually been doing that from the very beginning.

How do the distinct personalities of the Sesame Street characters influence your designs and drawings? I don’t think of them as characters. They are truly my friends, and they all have a very special place in me that I trust and lean on when I have to draw, sculpt or pose them. They are living entities within me because, like all of us, they have “minds” and “thoughts” all their own. The writers and performers do brilliant work to bring them to life.

In the tenth anniversary book celebrating Calvin and Hobbes, my favorite comic strip of all time, cartoonist Bill Watterson confirmed my own sentiments about being intimately symbiotic with the characters we work with. He also would just come up with a situation and wait for Calvin to “tell” him what he wanted to do in it.

So when I am directing a photoshoot or doing drawings of them in various scenarios, I usually don’t plan anything out. I just think about the scenario and let them “tell” me how they want to move through it. It may sound strange, but it is a very deep-seated experience that the performers go through, and I build upon their leads.

Describe your research process for Sesame Street’s new character, Julia. Autism is very sensitive, so research alone was only the beginning. There had to be an intimate and actual investment in the community that lives with autism.

I received an opportunity to volunteer at a school with a program for children on the spectrum. I was able to work with one particular child who had tremendous motor skill challenges. I helped him build his name with blocks, something he did not want to do before. I just loved him because whenever I went into the classroom, he would get so excited. There are several stories like this that I have in respect to people on the spectrum. So when the assignment to design our autistic character came to me, I had not only a history and personal investment, but also a deep compassion and enthusiasm for the autism community that was there long before this assignment.

Julia is actually representative of one special little girl who just touched my heart so much in the class in which I volunteered. I could go on, but I will just say that when my pencil touched the paper for the first time to design her, it was a sacred moment for me.

Who is your favorite Sesame Street character? Cookie Monster is, in my heart, the greatest of all characters ever created! As passionate as he is about cookies, he would give his last cookie away. My own passionate enthusiasm is very much like his. I love my work, my creative gifts and my skills, but I love to share them and encourage others to give their dreams a real chance. So, Cookie Monster represents the heart of one who loves cookies so very much—but he loves his friends so much more.

Why did you decide to develop a new art school, the Spiritstorm School? Earlier, I mentioned that teacher who told me I would never get a job at Sesame Street. I also wanted my father to support and encourage me, but he just didn’t have it in him. I learned how to deflect their discouragement, and I was fortunate to have my mother and some great mentors who escorted me through my creative path to survive and thrive in the world of my deepest dreams.

Unfortunately, many other students hear that kind of discouragement but don’t have the support they need to create a life through the refining of their creative gifts. There have to be places where people can go to get this type of genuine support from members of their creative tribe, to crush the discouragement that people of all ages with a creative dream encounter. My new dream is to make the Spiritstorm School one of those places.

Right now, I have independent mentees as I build toward launching the full school, hopefully, in about five years. But the foundation curriculum is complete, copyrighted and registered with the United States Department of Education. It is a combination of exercises that I have extracted from my own career challenges as I have learned to overcome them and stories to show what is possible when one is committed to give oneself entirely to a creative calling. As I support my mentees, I am learning how to refine and expand the curriculum as well as remain a student of it.