Filmmaker and Entrepreneur Tania Luna

Tania Luna is a member of the Cohort, an entrepreneur, and a filmmaker and producer living in the mid-Atlantic. In this spotlight series, find out what draws her to her dual careers, and how she thinks her creative practice expands her professional career.

Can you share an interesting fact about you?

I used to research surprise psychology and had a business that sold surprise experiences — people signed up and had no idea what would happen. My secret(ish) mission was to help people embrace the unknown in everyday life.

What's your best tip for managing dual careers?

Cut the stuff that doesn’t make you come alive. Dual careers require more time and more energy-rich time. I’ve stopped or significantly reduced activities that don’t contribute to my goals or energy — everything from social media to meh-level relationships to offering business advice to random people who ask for it. I also designate Mondays as my worry days so I don’t deplete myself with ruminating throughout the week. After a lifetime of defaulting to “yes,” I am finally befriending “no” in every area of my life. 

What draws you to both careers? And if your creative career became more successful, would you choose to do only that?

I help build human-friendly workplaces for animal advocacy orgs via my nonprofit Scarlet Spark. I co-founded a senior dog sanctuary called Scarlet Heart and live with 40+ animals. And I’m a writer, screenwriter, and filmmaker. 

After selling LifeLabs Learning (my last company), I promised myself I’d only spend time on things I deeply value. I loved LifeLabs, but it wasn’t making the change in this world that I was most desperate to see.

I’m drawn to animal advocacy because of its magnitude and neglect. For example, more animals suffer in factory farms each year than there are humans on earth. 

I think I’m drawn to filmmaking because it’s also a form of world building and, occasionally, even world changing. 

I do not want to reduce my animal advocacy work. I’m actually sprinkling it into my creative work in an attempt to normalize plant-based eating and antispeciest values. I’m currently fundraising for a vegan Christmas romcom (ridiculous, I know!) that has a great producer and director attached.

Why do you think this sort of creative-professional lifestyle is so misunderstood?What prompted your desire to push into a creative career?

I’ve had a morning pages ritual since 2019 where I process my thoughts in writing. Around 2023, I found myself typing “I wish I could make more time for writin— ” Then I stopped because I got the distinct sense I had written this before. So I did a search through the document, and realized I had written this EXACT thing dozens of times over the years. It was my very own “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” moment.

I wrote some nonfiction books that tied into my businesses and made two web series for funnsies, but I long resisted dedicating more time to creative work because I worried it wasn’t meaningful enough for “the world.” After seeing that sentence again and again though, I figured that it is meaningful for my inner world, and that’s good enough to take seriously.

I let myself write just for the joy of it and instantly felt more fulfilled and alive. I stopped insisting that it had to have value. And, ironically, that is when I started to find really fun ways to express my other values through my creative work.

How do you think your creative practice impacts your business — or vice versa?

Both recharge me. And both feed me ideas for the other side of my life. For example, I created an org health “beat sheet” for my nonprofit clients inspired by film structure. And so many emotions I feel and bizarre characters I meet in my advocacy work find their way into my writing.