Today we’d like to introduce you to Chadwick Fortenberry.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I did not take the traditional path to where I am today. But looking back I am not sure there was a traditional path that could have gotten me here.
I grew up in Mississippi with a hunger to create things. I started college thinking I wanted to be a chef. Culinary arts, food photography, the whole thing. But about a year and a half in I was offered a full performance scholarship to switch to theatre and join the chorale and show choir. I took it because who doesn’t want their school paid for, and that decision changed everything.
At Mississippi University for Women I threw myself into every creative pursuit I could find. Acting, set design, lighting design, writing, directing. I started the college’s first improv group. I joined Alpha Psi Omega, the honorary theatre fraternity. I sang lead in two bands where we wrote our own music and performed at festivals across Mississippi. And I landed my first professional acting job at Unto These Hills, an outdoor drama telling the story of the Trail of Tears for the Cherokee Nation in the mountains of North Carolina. I did two seasons and 128 performances. That is also where I met my wife. She was a dancer in the show and I was playing Reverend Sam Worcester. We have been together ever since.
After graduation we packed up and moved to New York City to pursue acting seriously. My day job was at Deutsche Bank on Wall Street and then Park Avenue in their private wealth management division, where I had to obtain a security license and operate in one of the most high-pressure professional environments in the world, just five years after September 11th. At night I was performing Off-Broadway/Off-Off Broadway while co-founding an improv and sketch comedy group called Do You Like This In Your Face? that had a monthly spot at the Broadway Comedy Club. At the Peoples Improv Theatre during their SketchProv event we received favorable reviews from SNL writers at the time. I had a lead role in a rock musical called Soul Searching. I was in the movie Duplicity as a background actor in a scene with Paul Giamatti. I even appeared in multiple commercials during my time as an actor. New York was everything I had hoped it would be creatively, even if it was relentless.
The moment that crystalized something important happened when I pitched an idea to Charlie Todd, the founder of Improv Everywhere. I wanted to dress up as King Philip IV of Spain and stand next to his painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art signing autographs as if I were the King himself because at the time I looked exactly like him. Charlie loved it. We filmed it and posted it on YouTube and it got 1.7 million views. The New York Times covered it. CNN covered it. It ended up in an Improv Everywhere documentary that debuted at South by Southwest and streamed on Netflix and Amazon Prime. That was 2009 and 2010. Before the algorithm. Before viral was a marketing strategy. It taught me something I have never forgotten. A genuinely surprising human moment does not need a budget. It needs truth and a little audacity.
In 2011 my wife and I decided we wanted to be closer to family and start one of our own. We moved to Nashville. I started doing freelance production work and built a YouTube channel that had gained some momentum after the viral video. I took some temp work to pay the bills, sold cameras at Wolf Camera, and eventually landed a producer and editor role at MBC Media working on healthcare content. That led me to StudioNow, which was owned by AOL at the time, where I became Director of Creative Network and grew their global marketplace of creative professionals from 3,000 to 8,000. During that time I helped develop content studios for Coca-Cola in Atlanta, Procter and Gamble, and McDonald’s in Chicago. I sold original programming to Travelocity and other well known properties. I worked on a SaaS platform to help production companies win work and was their voice during the building process to make sure they get what they needed. And I wrote, directed, and produced a branded music video for Hardee’s in under one week that got 2 million views across social platforms and registered me as an ASCAP songwriter and producer.
From there my career took me through some of the most iconic brands and institutions in Nashville. I spent time at Exclaim Health TV as Vice President of Media overseeing a network of 200 plus hospital facilities. I was Director of Photography at Opry Entertainment where I filmed historic moments including Ashley McBryde’s Opry debut, and Reba McEntire’s Opry Anniversary where Dolly Parton surprised her while I had a camera in my hand. I helped work on the original content pipeline that eventually became Circle TV.
Then came HCA Healthcare where I built their entire corporate creative video function from zero. Over four years I developed content for their 50th anniversary, directed a full company rebrand defining the motion graphic visual identity for video and photography now used across hundreds of hospital facilities nationwide, and managed a studio renovation. I did all of this while producing videos for 260,000 employees during a global pandemic.
For the past four and a half years I have served as Director of Production at Massive Mission Creative Media Agency and helped drive our growth managing all the productions that come through our doors. Our client roster has included some of the world’s most recognized pharmaceutical and Fortune 500 brands.
Running parallel to all of this from 2009-2021 has been my own creative agency, Craft Digital, which I describe as handcrafted media for a digital landscape. Through Craft Digital I have done creative direction for Humanaut Agency as a part of their Mother Brain, consulted for Nashville Ballet, produced content for the Tennessee STEM Innovation Network, and worked with everyone from WWE talent to independent YouTubers to nonprofit organizations.
In total I have now worked with more than 50 Fortune 500 and global brands across healthcare, entertainment, automotive, media, publishing, and philanthropy. I am a 40 plus time Telly Award winner, a Webby Award honoree, and a judge for the Webby, Telly, and Signal Awards.
But if you ask me what ties all of it together it is the same thing that pulled me away from culinary school and onto a stage in Mississippi more than twenty years ago. I am wired to tell stories that move people. Everything else has just been figuring out how many different ways I can do that.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Smooth is probably not the right word. But looking back the struggles were less about failure and more about figuring out who I was supposed to become next.
The hardest transition I ever made was leaving acting behind as my primary identity. When you spend your formative years training as a performer, studying Improv, doing commercials, Off-Broadway shows, performing improv at the Broadway Comedy Club, building your entire sense of self around being on stage, and then life starts pulling you in a different direction, there is a real grief in that. It is not dramatic. It is quiet. You just slowly realize that the thing you thought you were building toward is becoming something else entirely.
For me that transition happened gradually through necessity and curiosity in equal measure. I needed to pay the bills in New York so I started filming things. Then I started editing things. Then I started directing things for other people. And somewhere in that process I realized that the skills I had built as a performer, understanding an audience, building to an emotional moment, knowing when something is working and when it is not, were making me a better filmmaker and creative director than most people who had come to it through a traditional path.
But knowing that intellectually and feeling settled in it are two different things. For years I carried a quiet tension between the person I had trained to be and the career I was actually building. I would introduce myself as a creative director and somewhere in the back of my mind a voice would say but you are really an actor. It took a long time to understand that those two things were never in conflict. The acting was not a detour from my creative career. It was the foundation of it.
The other genuine struggle was learning how to navigate the business side of creativity. As a performer nobody teaches you about P&L, client management, revenue strategy, or how to build a team. You learn craft. You learn discipline. You learn how to take direction and how to give it. But the business of creativity is a completely different education and I had to earn that one the hard way through doing it, making mistakes, and watching what worked and what did not across multiple companies and industries.
There were also the natural ups and downs of a career that refused to stay in one lane. Moments where I questioned whether my range was an asset or a liability. Whether being genuinely passionate about too many things was confusing to people who wanted a simpler story. Whether a theatre kid from Mississippi who had worked on Wall Street, was a comedian, made viral videos, produced healthcare content, and filmed musicians was someone a company could actually make sense of.
What I eventually came to understand is that the through line was always there. I was always telling stories. I was always trying to make an audience feel something. The stage just kept getting bigger and the medium kept changing. And the unconventional path that sometimes felt like a liability turned out to be the thing that made me genuinely different from every other creative executives in the room.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’ve spent the last 15 years helping organizations tell stories that connect with people and drive results. My background spans creative direction, video production, photography, design, content strategy, and building creative teams. As I mentioned earlier, I was also in performing arts as an actor, which has given me that unique perspective on storytelling, audience engagement, and the power of that authentic human connection.
I’m probably best known for bringing together creativity, storytelling, and operations. Whether I’m directing a video, developing a brand campaign, performing on stage, or leading a creative team, I’m always thinking about how to create experiences that resonate with people. I love the creative process, but I’m equally passionate about building the systems, workflows, and environments that allow creative people to do their best work.
Throughout my career, I’ve led everything from small creative teams to large-scale content operations, producing work for national brands, nonprofit organizations, and mission-driven companies. I’ve also had opportunities to create viral content, lead award-winning projects, and help organizations strengthen their connection with audiences through compelling storytelling.
What I’m most proud of isn’t any single project or award, although I’ve been fortunate to receive multiple industry recognitions. What I’m most proud of is the people I’ve mentored, the teams I’ve helped build, and worked with along the way. And the lasting impact of the stories we’ve told together. Art is collaborative and storytelling is the medium that brings us all together in a shared experience whether creating it or performing it.
What sets me apart is my belief that creativity is ultimately about people. My experience as both an actor and a creative leader has taught me that the most effective stories are rooted in empathy, authenticity, and understanding the audience. I bring both a storyteller’s heart and a leader’s mindset to every project I work on, always looking for ways to inspire, connect, and create something meaningful.
Any big plans?
Looking ahead, I’m excited about the future of storytelling and the role human connection will play in an increasingly technological world. I’ve spent my career with creativity and commercialization coexisting, helping organizations tell stories that connect with people, and I believe that mission is more important than ever.
While AI is transforming how content is created, I don’t believe technology replaces the human experience. In many ways, I think it will increase our desire for authentic connection. One of the themes I’ve written about recently is that as technology becomes more powerful, people will increasingly seek experiences that can’t be replicated by a screen or an algorithm. That’s why I believe the future is not only digital, but deeply human.
I’m excited to continue exploring how storytelling, technology, AI and the arts can work together. Whether through creative leadership, writing, filmmaking, or live performance, I want to help create experiences that bring people together and remind us of what makes us human. I’m especially passionate about supporting the performing arts and helping build spaces and screens where communities can gather, share stories, and experience something meaningful together.
More than anything, I’m looking forward to helping shape the next chapter of storytelling while ensuring that, no matter how advanced our tools become, the human story remains at the center of it all.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chadwickelliott
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadfortenberry
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/chadwickelliott
- Other: https://www.massivemission.com
