Camille Eden: Building A Diverse Talent Pipeline

As Nickelodeon‘s Vice President, Recruitment, Talent Develop­ment and Outreach, Camille Eden finds and places new talent to support a growing slate of series and feature productions. During her decade managing talent acquisition and outreach at Walt Disney Animation Studios and her tenure at Nickelodeon, Camille has built a strong reputation for promoting diverse and inclusive hiring practices, and fostering a recruitment culture that attracts, supports and retains the best talent at all levels – and for championing an industry that embraces unique and important voices.

I have always been committed to building recruiting cultures that bring new voices to the forefront. It truly ‘takes a village’ inside an organization to invest in nurturing a talent pipeline across departments and hiring managers. And it continues after we hire someone, to ensure we have an ecosystem that supports an employee during their work lifecycle, from their welcome, training and mentorship to growth opportunities. With that holistic approach, we hope that people will have a great exper­ience and pay it forward, bringing in the next generation of talent and the next after that.

I use my platform and my power to help open the door to people who are too often underrepresented. There was a time when I was the only woman – and only woman of color – in the room as I was coming up in the industry, and I want to make space for someone to not go through what I experienced with bias or a feeling of ‘otherness.’ I do not want them to feel like the

only one in the room without a sense of support and community. Keeping the door open for the next generation and offering a seat at the table where decisions are made – that my superpower.

Invest in every opportunity to build your ‘soft skills’ which are vital and transferable throughout your career: listening, giving and receiving feedback, knowing how to read a room for context, problem-solving, time management. I’ve carried the fundamental skills I gleaned at my first jobs at ILM – as a security coordinator and then a production assistant. I know these helped shape my pathway and how I’ve adapted to every new opportunity. If everyone could get the hands-on training and exposure I had early in my career, I think it would be invaluable and make a substantive impact on their work-life experience and readiness for success.

Keeping the door open for the next generation and offering a seat at the table where decisions are made — that’s my superpower.

Here’s the advice I would give to my younger self, that I share with young professionals or those progressing on their career journey: have trust in your gut, have trust in your instincts that you are doing the right thing in the right place. We all have some degree of imposter syndrome especially when you come up as a woman of color– but don’t let that stop you. Keep pushing through and tell yourself “You’vegot this!” and counter the negative tapes in your head. I strive to be the person who can be that pep talk for others grappling with doubt and discouragement, because that how we lift each other up and move forward, together.