Lyte presents “Womxn at Lyte,” a series of conversations highlighting the voices of our womxn.
Q: As a child, what did you think you wanted to be, how do you think you came to that decision?
Alexandra Naughton: To be perfectly honest, I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I never had any idea of what I wanted for myself career-wise. I did well in school and I got good grades, but I was not driven to pursue any sort of career path. I spent the first three semesters of college thinking I was going to be a Spanish major and maybe teach Spanish to high school students. I think the idea of being a high school teacher is certainly honorable, but somewhere along the line, I realized that it wasn't really what I wanted to do. I switched to studying English literature after falling in love with the romantic poets, in the 19th century and just wanting to focus on that more and study that for school, even though I clearly had no career path lined up for that either.
When I was little I knew that I loved art and I loved writing and telling stories and making my own books and creating events to bring people together. When my parents had my aunts and uncles and their friends over, I remember bringing all of the hats from the closet down to the living room and having everyone put on a funny hat to have a hat party. I was like three or four years old. I would also put on shows for family and friends in our basement. We had a little ledge area that was like a stage. I would perform songs that I would make up and do dance routines with my sister and anybody else that I could rope into doing it with me.
I wasn't necessarily encouraged to pursue anything like that. I remember being a kid and saying that I wanted to be a photographer and learn more about photography and was basically told, “You'll have a hard time making any money from that.” I don't want to blame my parents or anything, but they didn't have career goals for themselves when they were younger so they were kind of clueless about directing me and my sister to do anything. For example, we didn't know we could apply for scholarships. They just knew that they wanted me to go to college since neither of them had gone.
When I graduated, I started working doing administrative stuff for an insurance company and probably would have continued doing that for a while but I moved to the Bay Area. I kind of floated around for a while, going from one dead end job to another, and it wasn’t until a friend encouraged me to interview at Lyte that I started to accept more challenges and try new things. I'm so grateful that I finally feel like I have a career path and I know I'm good at this. I love what I do and can see myself doing this for a long time. When I'm not working, I try to focus on my creative passions.
Q: What would your younger self be most surprised about how you live your life today?
Alexandra Naughton: I think my younger self would definitely be like, “Wow you're buying a house and you're having a baby. I never thought I would do that.” As a kid, I don't think I ever imagined what it would be like to be a grown-up. I don't think I ever imagined myself being settled or doing grown-up things. It didn't seem like something that was possible for me. I thought I was going to be a kid forever and maybe that kind of influenced my mindset and my choices for a good part of my life. I still kinda think that time isn't real, but I take myself and my responsibilities much more seriously now.
Q: What do you think is the hardest part of what you do for a living?
Alexandra Naughton: The hardest part of what I do is probably managing my time. There's always a lot to do, especially around the festival season, and it's hard to make myself step away and have time to myself. I’m definitely thankful to have such a wonderful team and also thankful that we're starting to grow and have more to help share the load. We do a great job of complementing each other's skills. We all bring different things to the table. I'm super grateful for them! I love my team and personally speaking I think I've definitely gotten better at delegating tasks, though there’s always room for improvement. I probably need to get better about focusing on larger goals that I want to set for myself and the team and try not to get us caught up in the details (as I’m sometimes prone to do).
Q: What do you love about working at Lyte?
Alexandra Naughton: I believe in my team and I believe in the work that we do. I really do feel like what we do is worthwhile, and it is endlessly interesting to me and gives me a source of joy and pride when I see our ideas come to fruition. Never before had I felt like I contributed something to make the company better, but at Lyte, I definitely feel like I have a voice and it's being listened to. I know that I have good ideas and I’m encouraged to act on them, to speak up for myself and speak up for my team, and put in the work. No longer am I just some nameless cog in the machine.
The Fan Experience team is constantly thinking of ways to make improvements, to make things better for the company, to create processes that are easier for our fans to use that result in more satisfying solutions for our clients. It’s really amazing to catch something like an issue or a bug or a workflow that needs clarification or simplification and then see those ideas taken seriously and put into action, and then to see the results of those actions. It’s really like a blessing. It makes me feel like I matter and my team matters and we're not just a bunch of robots punching a keyboard. We're actually making a positive difference.
Q: What lesson took you the longest to unlearn?
Alexandra Naughton: Probably fixing my own self esteem, and it’s an ongoing process. Too many times have I been in situations, bad personal relationships and bad work environments, where I've been told that I don't matter or what I have to say is not important or interesting or I don't know what I'm talking about. Before joining Lyte, I felt like I was about ready to give up. I had a boss who talked down to me and said things like, “Oh Alexandra, don’t you see how you’re wasting your life in this dead-end job.” He would literally laugh at me and ridicule me, and at the same time would reinforce the idea that I couldn’t do any better. If you hear anything often enough you're eventually going to believe it. Unlearning the poor treatment and trying to find some confidence within myself has been probably the hardest to learn, and I still struggle with it. After some seriously traumatic experiences, I had a lot of trouble teaching myself how to believe in myself and trust my gut. I think that’s a defense mechanism in enduring trauma, turning off that gut feeling. Feeling it and ignoring it in order to avoid conflict or further mistreatment. Reconditioning myself so that I can trust myself again has been a slow and difficult process.
Q: What are you more afraid of failure or success and why?
Alexandra Naughton: I’m definitely not afraid of success. I welcome success, I would love to be more successful. I'm afraid of failure for sure, or just even the smallest little mess up. I don't know if taking it personally is the right way to put it, but it kind of crushes me when I realize I’ve made a mistake. I don't want to fail. We all learn from failure, that’s true, and it's great to mess up and learn from it but it also sucks, like “damn, why didn’t I think of that? How did I let that happen? I must have been distracted and didn’t think that one through!” I’ll always own up to something that I've done wrong, the last thing I want to do is pass the blame on anyone else. If I fuck up I’m happy to be accountable and I'm definitely going to learn from it and not let it happen in the future. It's tough!
As for being successful, who's afraid of success? Why would anyone not want to be successful?
Q: What's a non-negotiable in your life?
Alexandra Naughton: Getting enough sleep. If I’m not getting enough sleep, I’m no good to anybody. There's no use wrecking myself to get something done. It can always wait. I like to block off time on my calendar so I can leave the house and stretch my legs and recharge so I can come back to work more thoughtful and relaxed. We can’t just be at our desks all day! We need rest time to clear our minds and reset. Today I blocked off a chunk of time this afternoon so I could take a walk in the rain. I’m online from 7 pm till 2 am today covering the box office from home so I needed that time this afternoon to not be at my desk. It's not always something I achieve but it's something that I do feel very conscientious about and I'm constantly telling my team, “Please make sure you’re taking time to yourself. If you worked over the weekend, you need to take time off, just put it on the calendar and let us know. We'll fill in the gap any way we can, but you need to not be working 24/7. It's not healthy.”
Q: What can womxn create together or what do we want to create together?
Alexandra Naughton: We want to create a better world for everybody. We want more fairness. We want things to make sense and things to be good for as many people as possible. I mean that's what I care about. Injustice, it's something that really bothers me. I don't know if that's my stance as being a womxn or just like being a person in this world who has experienced it and sees it and wants that to change. I think that's something that we can definitely work on together, everyone. There are so many things that are wrong in this world, and if people care about how other people feel about things, or how our smallest actions affect most people, even small actions can really make a big difference. And it's not really the fault of the individual it's the systems that we live under and they are largely unfair and only benefit a small number of people who are in charge of everything and want to keep things as is because it benefits them. I hate that shit. I can't watch the news. It just makes me mad. I think there are definitely things that people do within their communities or on a smaller scale that can help move that but I definitely don't know the answer. I think we just need to actually work together. We’re more powerful that way.
Q: What's the most exciting improvement for womxn in the industry or in general?
Alexandra Naughton: Existing, for one. Having a voice and power and the opportunity to do anything where that might not have existed in the past. I have the pleasure of working with so many amazing womxn at Lyte who are leaders and experts in their fields. Maybe this is becoming more of the norm now, but it was not my experience when I was first starting out in the corporate world. It’s certainly inspiring.
Q: What title would you give this chapter in your life?
Alexandra Naughton: It would be like a title card in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. “Alexandra Finally Gets Her Shit Together.”
Q: Any last words for us?
Alexandra Naughton: It's good to take chances on people. You never know. I feel like I was given a chance when others may have thought that I did not deserve one. I was just some random person and Lyte took a chance on me. This is my fourth year here at Lyte, the longest I've ever been at a single company. Lyte is such a crazy and weird place but I love it and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t been given that chance, so I try to keep that same open-minded approach when I'm hiring. And it's never proven me wrong. You can find the best friendships in unlikely places. Some of the best things that have ever happened to me came out of completely bizarre encounters. I think it's good to keep yourself open and open-minded. No one knows everything and we should always want to learn more. The people you least expect to teach you something can sometimes really surprise you. Stay open! And don't think you know everything there is to know, because you probably don't.
Womxn at Lyte featuring Alexandra Naughton, Head of Fan Experience at Lyte