Jennifer Peepas writes an advice blog at CaptainAwkward.com, answering questions about dating, relationships, friendship, family, work, mental health, and setting healthy boundaries. Jennifer’s advice has been featured at Vice, IndieWire, BuzzFeed, Slate, Ask A Manager, The Huffington Post, and other popular sites, and the site itself has a sprawling and dedicated community of fans and commenters, a spin-off fan-moderated forum site, and regular MeetUps on four continents.
Jennifer is a prolific essayist and storyteller, appearing on Chicago stages to perform true stories about awkward moments from real life, and she does periodic speaking engagements on topics like managing a social media presence for indie artists, how comment moderation and transparent ground rules help foster functional internet communities, and how to give better feedback on creative work. She will almost definitely be on your podcast.
Previously Jennifer worked as a babysitter, a waitress, a proposal writer and project administrator for international aid projects, a database administrator, a public relations account executive, a newsletter and press release writer, a training coordinator, a freelance product tester, a fact checker, exactly one 30 minute shift as a telephone sex operator (it turns out they *really* need you to Not Laugh when you do that job, no exceptions), and just about every kind of temporary “office assistant” role you can imagine before she ran away to film school in 2003, earning an MFA in screenwriting and directing from Columbia College Chicago.
Jennifer has written and directed her own short films and has produced and crewed on many indie projects in and around Chicago. She recently finished a two year stint at Getting To Know, Inc., where she handled social media, researched marketing and distribution channels, and wrote scripts for adapting books about the world’s greatest artists into animated educational videos for children. From 2006 to 2018 she worked as an adjunct professor, teaching undergraduate students and adult learners to write, direct, produce, shoot, and edit short fiction and documentary films at Columbia College Chicago and to make short comedies and web series at The Second City. She likes literary adaptations, coming-of-age stories that aren’t necessarily about teenagers, comedies where you don’t know if it’s okay to laugh but you laugh anyway, and characters who think that it’s possible to outsmart their feelings.
