By Cheryl Birch, CFO/Director of Finance, Operations and HR, USC Institute for Creative Technologies
Cheryl Birch is on the Leadership team at USC Institute for Creative Technologies and has been at ICT since 2000, joining not long after it was formed. Previously, she was Vice President, Business Affairs, Universal Studios, where she negotiated deals for many series including “Murder, She Wrote” and “Quantum Leap” before moving to Paramount Pictures as Vice President, Business Affairs, in their network television division, to do the same for the “Star Trek” series, and many more. This is her story of how she came to work at ICT and some of the memories along the way.
I remember sitting in my office on the Paramount Pictures Studio Lot and receiving a call from longtime colleague and Creative Executive Richard Lindheim. He said he had “Some government folks visiting” and he wanted them to have the “Opportunity to experience some unusual things in Los Angeles.” He was hoping I could help them get into the Magic Castle, a private club for magicians, as my brother is a performing professional magician. I made the arrangements and we set off that night.
As a result of that evening, I learned about The StoryDrive Engine, a project in which Richard was turning a typical paper and pencil case study exercise into an interactive experience for the Department of Defense. In the months that followed, he told me about the success of the experience, and ultimately about the creation of a research organization – the Institute for Creative Technologies, at USC – that would focus on combining the expertise of the entertainment industry, with that of academia, in support of military training and simulation challenges.
Richard’s enthusiasm for the ICT, and his belief in how it could help the Department of Defense, made accepting his invitation to join him at ICT a no-brainer. I was happy to use my business and Hollywood deal-making skills to support the researchers bringing solutions to the DoD’s real-world challenges. I joined ICT five months after the UARC contract was signed, and it’s been an amazing journey ever since.
However, there were at least a few “bumps” in the road as we attempted to combine the flexible financial practices of Hollywood with the strictly regulated federal funding practices of the government. We also needed to build a business infrastructure that enabled us to be efficient and responsive to proposing work, helping to hire staff, make purchases, and monitor the progress of research projects. Even the facility needed to reflect and support the creative activities of the ICT! So one of my proudest accomplishments was later learning that the business office team we had assembled was considered one of the most well-regarded at USC.
In the early days of ICT, I remember returning from a very challenging meeting with central campus (the unusual weather was as stormy as the meeting had been). Richard mentioned that when we got back to ICT, he would be “Meeting with Randy Hill.” It never occurred to me that Randy Hill would be the same Randy Hill I knew from JFK High School, Sacramento! As an aside, he was the drum major in the marching band, and I played clarinet. Small world! Not long afterwards, Randy joined ICT from USC’s Information Sciences Institute, and became our Director of Applied Research and Transition.
Then the tragedy of 9/11 happened.
On that day, I was on a train trip through British Columbia with Richard Lindheim and his wife Elaine. Suddenly, all, flights were grounded. We continued our trip by train. We were all shocked by the awful events of the day as they unfolded.
As we made our slow return to the US, Richard started talking about how the entertainment industry had been deployed to assist in the fight against Hitler during WWII. By the time we returned to L.A., we’d set out a plan to create the Entertainment Industry Task Force, gathering Hollywood writers, directors, and actors in the fight against terrorism. This became something of a “think tank” brainstorming scenarios which were then put into simulations and used for training, making use of the unique talents at ICT, and within our wider network, to do good. We have continued with this type of collaboration, in many iterations, and for different purposes, right up to the present day with our Force Writers Room.
A few years later, in 2006, Richard decided to retire. While we started the search for a new Executive Director, our General Manager, David Wertheimer, temporarily assumed the role. David was a creative executive from Paramount Pictures who, as a teen, had turned his interest in technology into a successful bulletin board service, and later worked at Paramount, as Chief Digital Officer for the newly-launched Paramount Digital Entertainment.
Eventually, USC, and the Army, approved the promotion of Dr. Randall Hill (the same Randy Hill I’d gone to high school with!) and he remains our Executive Director to this day. Each of the Executive Directors with whom I worked were/are creative and imaginative. It’s been an honor to be on this journey with them and everyone else at ICT.
On a final note, many people like to ask me about working on Star Trek, especially as many of ICT’s technologies seem to reflect what was once science fiction, and made it into science fact. I have many memories of working on the Studio Lot at Paramount, but one of my favorite anecdotes is when I wanted to take our government guests from one of our ICT projects to the Paramount lot. The Art Director of many Star Trek series, including Star Trek: Enterprise, Herman Zimmerman, designed our original offices on Fiji Way. Herman generously gave us all passes to visit the set.
As luck would have it, they were shooting that day, and Scott Bakula, captain of the Enterprise, was on the set. I worked with Scott on Quantum Leap, when I was at Universal Studios, and we both played on the Quantum Leap softball team. As we were exiting the sound stage, Scott was standing in the doorway, chatting with a member of the crew. I explained who our guests were, and he graciously welcomed them like the gentleman I had always known.
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BIO:
Cheryl Birch is on the Leadership team at USC Institute for Creative Technologies, as CFO/Director of Finance, Operations and HR, and has been at ICT for 24 years, joining not long after it was formed. Previously, she was Vice President, Business Affairs, Universal Studios, where she negotiated deals for many series including Murder, She Wrote and Quantum Leap, before moving to Paramount Pictures as Vice President, Business Affairs, in their network television division, to do the same for the Star Trek and many more. Cheryl Birch is a Certified Public Accountant (C.P.A.) and holds an M.B.A., with an emphasis on Management Information Systems, from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She also holds a Masters Degree in Research Administration from Johns Hopkins University.