Talia Van-Son
Founder of Creative Diplomacy Playground
I was grateful to grow up in the suburbs of Tel-Aviv, Israel, with parents who taught me to respect cultural diversity. My mother came from pre-war Poland, and my father from Holland. Both were forced to leave their homes in early childhood because of the Nazis, like so many Israelis of their generation. One of my earliest memories is of a family trip to the predominantly Arab town of Bethlehem, so that we might experience midnight mass on Christmas eve.
At the age of four I informed my parents of my ambition to become a dancer and actor. This wasn’t, “Mommy, I wanna be a movie star when I grow up!” I was talking about doing it right away, and the thought never crossed my mind that I might not succeed. I can’t explain where that notion came from, let alone how the four-year-old me managed to persuade her parents that she meant business. They started me on classical ballet that year, and by the time I was seven I began acting in Israeli theater productions. I was fifteen when I got cast in a popular Israeli TV series, playing the part of a rebel teenager. In my early twenties, I moved to New York to study under Uta Hagen and William Hickey, and have made America my home ever since. I gave up acting a few years later, because of my aversion to the “casting couch,” and because I discovered how much I liked having a say in how things were done. That’s when I discovered my passion for making things happen. In the film industry, the word for that is producing.
I am, indeed, a producer. More than that, I am a creative entrepreneur, an artist with a humanist bent, someone who finds joy in fostering win-win collaborations among visionary talents, co-creating unique endeavors that aspire to making a difference in the world. I’m a connect-the-dots person, but only when the dots glow from within, with special qualities all their own.
That’s me today, anyway. I have worn many different hats along the way. When I relocated to Los Angeles in the mid ‘90s, I took an entry-level staff position at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. A few days later, after a chance encounter with hotel guest Gerald Schoenfeld, I was called into my boss’s office and informed that, henceforth, I was to work exclusively with the hotel’s VIP guests.
In 1999, I launched the music performances at the Foundation Room at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip, cutting my teeth on producing a series of concert events involving numerous pop and world music artists. My experience there led to my tenure as Vice President of Life Elite Members Club, a private club in Beverly Hills for Fortune 500 executives, artists and business executives, where I produced unique, high end events for its members. From 2002-2005 I served as National Director of Events and Travel for Spark Networks and its wildly successful subsidiary, JDate, organizing and producing special events, and running the organization’s extensive travel programs domestically and worldwide.
Since then, I have produced and collaborated on a wide array of projects, and events, as an independent consultant, with notable clients and productions including Mercedes Benz Cup, Voices of Peace at Royce Hall, Toronto Film Festival, The Kodak Theater, Cirque Du Soleil, Cannes Film Festival, SFMOMA, Art Basel Miami and Ibiza Spotlight. In addition, I have collaborated on numerous events for charities, including Seeds of Peace with Ambassador Dennis Ross, Wounded Warrior Project, Project Angel Food, Race to Erase MS, Camp David for Women hosted by Elizabeth Taylor, and a Rain Forest Foundation event co-hosted by Whoopi Goldbeg and Chris Noth.
There is a rich through-line to this eclectic journey – my passion for creativity, a capacity to think big, and a genuine love of people and their stories that allows me to feel comfortable in my skin, whether in the corridors of power, when collaborating with artists, or in the random, sometimes magical conversations that can happen any time, as long as you’re open to the possibility. I’m still very much in touch with that little kid inside me, still relying on serendipity, intuition and chutzpah to inform my most important life choices.
Most of what I have done professionally has been an extension of the things I’m passionate about. And more than anything else, I am passionate about people –on a personal level, locally or globally, it doesn’t matter. When I meet creative thinkers from unrelated worlds, I sense the possibilities. I believe that when you’re passionate about something, you naturally attract the right people. That, in a nutshell, is the essence of Creative Diplomacy: a playground for bringing extraordinary individuals together, in the service of bringing humanity together.
