"Good work. Good business. Good for the community." That's not a tagline. That's a decision filter.
I don't think in straight lines — I think in layers. I start with feeling: does this resonate, does it ring true? Then I build the frame: what's the story, what's the tension, what's the human truth underneath? Then I zoom out: is this even the right problem? Only then do I move — and when I do, I move fast and clean. The ambiguous problems are where I'm most useful. The rooms where nobody's named the real question yet. That's where I find the shared purpose that none of the people in the room could see alone — and build something durable from it. The community gets served. The business gets built. The work earns its keep.
I listen first. I'm reading the room — testing for authenticity, sensing misalignment early, looking for the thing nobody's said out loud yet. Then I move. And when I move, it's with intention, not noise. Twenty-four years of this has taught me that ego is the most expensive thing in any creative organization. Take it off the table. Cheerlead the people around you. Let the work be bigger than any one person in the room.
Some of the platforms I built from scratch — Good Energy, Talk About It, Good Things Happen. Others I inherited and transformed into something with a business model behind them. The Toy Drive, the Food Drive, the School Supply Drive. Either way, the approach was the same: find the shared purpose that nobody has named yet, connect the people who need each other, build the infrastructure, let the work earn the revenue. That's not creative direction. That's organizational design. $25M+ later, I still think it's the only way to do it.
Portland, Oregon. 24 years. 12 Emmys. The headline says kindness is punk. Every platform I've built proves it.
People on your team are always at different places. Different pain points, different moments, different capacities. The job isn't to treat everyone the same — it's to read where each person is and meet them there. Sometimes that means discipline. Sometimes it means listening. Sometimes it means holding the standard firm and not apologizing for it.
What I've learned is that the team needs a connective tissue — something that brings people together across their differences, holds them accountable to each other, and keeps the work and the people pointed in the same direction. That's not a system. That's culture. And you build it through compassion, thoughtfulness, and expectation — all three, in the same breath.
Let your work speak for itself. Praise others when their work goes beyond what they thought they were capable of. And understand that your success as a leader is measured entirely by the success of the people around you — whether you created that success directly, or just created the conditions for them to create it themselves.
Leadership is clearly defined by the success of the people around you. The more you help influence that — the better leader you become.
Regional Creative Director across nine markets — NBC, ABC, CBS, and CW affiliates spanning the Midwest and West Coast. The role is part creative direction, part organizational design, part infrastructure build. I'm not just making work. I'm building the system that makes the work possible at scale — and doing it while the revenue partnerships can't wait, the markets can't go dark, and the industry is navigating one of the most disruptive transitions in broadcast history.
KGW Good Energy started as a clean energy awareness campaign. The insight that changed everything: the stories weren't about energy — they were about the people of Portland who believed the future could be better. When we shifted to that frame, OnPoint Community Credit Union came in as a partner not because of the platform, but because of what it said about KGW's values. PGE followed in year two. This wasn't a media buy. It was brand alignment. The Emmy was a bonus.
Good Energy wasn't a single campaign. It was the beginning of a long-term strategy to position KGW as the station that doesn't just cover Portland — it invests in it. The community drives below are part of that same architecture: ongoing initiatives designed to build participation, trust, and local relevance at scale.
As Regional Creative Director, I lead creative strategy and execution across nine TEGNA markets — NBC, ABC, CBS, and CW affiliates spanning the Midwest and West Coast. The role sits at the intersection of creative leadership, organizational design, and business strategy. I'm responsible for the creative output, the team architecture, the client relationships, and the production infrastructure — simultaneously, across markets that each have their own culture, partners, and pressures. When TEGNA restructured, I was brought in specifically to rebuild the creative operation. Nine markets. No creative leadership in place. Revenue partnerships that couldn't go dark. I evaluated 50–60 candidates, built an interview framework that prioritized cultural fit and creative range over résumé credentials, and filled every position within 30 days. Then I built TEGNA Clarity — a proprietary AI creative system now deployed across the region — to ensure the work could scale without losing quality. The markets never stopped producing. The clients never noticed the gap. And the infrastructure I built is now the model for how TEGNA approaches creative at scale.
TEGNA Clarity isn't a chatbot or a vendor integration. It's a purpose-built AI creative partner designed specifically around how commercial producers think, brief, and script. I built it because the off-the-shelf tools weren't asking the right questions — they were general-purpose engines being forced into a specialized creative workflow. Clarity changed that. It has now been part of 200+ producer conversations across multiple markets, and the feedback is consistent: scripts come faster, the thinking goes deeper, and producers feel supported rather than replaced. Alongside this, I built Creative Buzz — a 39-member cross-market learning community — and joined TEGNA's enterprise AI evaluation team to assess text-to-video, photo animation, and voiceover tools at scale.
Enough is an independent music video collaboration with Soren Song and Travis Stever — guitarist and co-founder of Coheed and Cambria. I directed, produced, edited, and filmed it. Fourteen participants across three states. Every one of them real — not cast, not performed, just found and trusted. The song is about self-acceptance. The film had to be, too. This project is here because it shows something a client reel can't: what I make when nobody's asking for anything. The instincts I bring to institutional work — finding the human, trusting the truth, resisting the safe version — these don't turn off. This is proof.
Testimonials are the most commonly mishandled format in commercial production. The typical approach: show up, point a camera at a satisfied customer, hope they say something usable. What you get is wooden, self-conscious, and forgettable. Over years of producing them, I developed a different process entirely.
It starts with a pre-interview — done via Zoom, before any crew is booked. I listen for the emotional beats: what actually changed for this person, what they felt before and after, what they'd never say on camera if you just asked them cold. I feed that conversation into a structured AI synthesis (using the same thinking behind TEGNA Clarity) to develop an emotionally grounded script that reflects both the subject's truth and the brand's positioning. The result is two things: a script, and a precise list of questions to guide the interview.
When we arrive on set, we're not hoping for a moment. We know what the moment is. We read the script, we run the interview, we collect the footage — and because the subject has already done the emotional work in pre-production, what comes out on camera is genuine. They feel validated. The brand gets authenticity. And I get a spot that doesn't look like a testimonial ad.
Not a borrowed framework. Not a methodology I read in a book. What actually happens when I walk into a room with a problem nobody's solved yet.
The real problem is almost never the stated problem. I read the room first. I'm testing for authenticity, sensing misalignment, looking for the thing nobody's said out loud yet. The solution comes after.
If it doesn't resonate, I don't build on it. Feeling right is the first test everything has to pass. People don't connect to messaging — they connect to meaning. That's where I start.
The best work comes from getting the right people to see their shared purpose. A credit union, a grocery chain, a nonprofit, a TV station — they all had the same pain point. I found it. That's not creative direction. That's organizational design.
Once I've found the truth, I execute fast and without ego. No wasted motion. The decision was made ten steps back — I just waited for the right moment to act on it. The work has to be bigger than anyone in the room.
“I was given the Toy Drive as a punishment. That’s what they did to new producers. And what I discovered inside that is that when you’re given something that nobody wants, you can do something unique and original — because people don’t pay attention to it. I absolutely loved it.”
— Sky Stever, on day one at KGW
That single assignment — handed off as an afterthought — became a 20-year platform generating $17M in revenue, 1.2M toys, 30M lbs of food, and 260K+ students served. The lesson wasn’t about the Toy Drive. It was about what happens when you look for opportunity in the chaos instead of waiting for the obvious project.
A brand platform only works if the station actually believes it — not just names it. When KGW Good Energy became something the newsroom genuinely lived inside, sponsors followed. When KGW Talk About It lost its sponsor, the platform's integrity was the exact reason a new one came back. Authenticity isn't a tone. It's a structural decision that either holds or it doesn't.
Built KGW Good Energy and KGW Talk About It as owned brand IP — storytelling ecosystems the station lives inside year-round, not campaigns with expiration dates. Directed the Toy Drive end-to-end: videographer, director, sales liaison, boom operator — whatever the shoot needed. Rebuilt Talk About It after losing its sponsor by going deeper into authenticity, not away from it. Forged the Portland Timbers partnership through a school supply drive that was designed to create relationships, not just deliverables. Every project compounded into the next.
"Skyler combines our vision with that of KGW's to develop content that does more than simply share the campaign message — it tells our story."
"Skyler is the best video director I've ever worked with. I've been running marketing campaigns for nearly 15 years and have never enjoyed working with news station creative teams — with Skyler, I want to hire him for every video we do."
"For nearly 20 years, you have handled Providence Wellness Watch with exemplary leadership and care. You are the calm in the storm, handling any crisis with kindness and steadiness."
"He is part of our team — or makes us feel a part of his. His instructions are clear, easy to follow, and still allow our teams to have fun while making a great commercial."
I'm most useful when the problem doesn't have a clean brief yet. When strategy and creativity need to merge and nobody knows quite how. When the room needs someone who will listen first, find the real question, and then move — cleanly, intentionally, without ego. If that's where you are, reach out.
What I do