Born on the Hudson River just north of New York City, I was raised in a number of homes by three loving moms and two kindhearted dads, with a multitude of wonderful siblings. Collecting my first paycheck for a creative endeavor when I was just five years old ($5 for first place in a newspaper coloring contest!) I have continued to pursue a living making things understandable and delightful.

After attending Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, I began my career at Janet Odgis + Company, a boutique design firm, working with world-class brands including Alfred A. Knopf, AT&T, Champion International Paper Company, Condé Nast, Estée Lauder, Ford Foundation, IBM, Julia Child, MetLife, and Museum of Modern Art, where my love of design language was solidified. After a few years, I co-founded the design studio Manville Bakacs Santana on lower Fifth Ave., continuing to work on a great variety of intriguing projects for outstanding brands including The Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Credit Lyonnais, The Gap, and Macy’s.

At the request of one of our long-time clients, Turner Broadcasting, I moved to Los Angeles, where I bolstered my brand development skills by expanding the franchises of the beloved Hanna-Barbera characters, most notably re-imagining and re-launching Scooby-Doo, ultimately working for Warner Bros.

Another few years and another cherished character, Kermit the Frog, and the east coast called me back to New York City to head up creative for The Jim Henson Company’s licensing & merchandising team.

Cut to a few years later, (and one wee real-life ‘’Muppet” of my own) the challenge of developing brands for real-life “characters” and real-world brands was intriguing enough to move to Washington D.C. and Discovery Communications, where I built a global consumer products creative team. There I found that not only did I thrive on building numerous brands across new categories, new television shows, new networks and new platforms, I fell in love with – and excelled at – the business side as well, and grew to head up the entirety of Discovery Consumer Products for North America – creative and business all in!

My sweet spot is the intersection of great brands, growing businesses, smart design, curious people, beautiful things, and noble causes.

I am enthralled by:

• Color
• Design – created by humans or nature
• Typography
• Collaboration of left brain/right brain
• Great brands
• Cooking, eating, entertaining
• Science
• Numbers
• Making things
• Fairness in everything
• Excellence in anything