2026 National Communicator
David Steiman
Director of Marketing
Pasadena City College
Pasadena, CA
One of the most important, toughest-to-prepare-for aspects of college marketing is crisis comms. Your nomination form discussed some of the work you did around wildfires in Pasadena. What happened?
In southern California, we experience this thing called the Santa Ana winds that will blow in a couple times a year. It’s just a dry wind that all of a sudden heats the area up anywhere from 20, 25 degrees within a couple hours. All of a sudden, it can go from 30 to 70 to 80 miles an hour.
It was in the evening (Jan. 7, 2025). The winds had really picked up. I was sitting in my office, and I started to smell smoke. Just then, one of the deans in our library said she had seen a fire on the hillside. We have a WhatsApp group that is just about crisis comms and emergency notifications. One of my colleagues who lives in the Eaton Canyon area said, “A fire just broke out here, and it’s already doubled in size within minutes.” All of sudden, it’s like, we need to evacuate. It’s full-on emergency.
It was 5 a.m. the following morning—I had to evacuate. So I got my family out and then came back to campus because we had activated our emergency operation system. We became a distribution place for the community but also donation center. Not that long after, we became the hub for FEMA and 30 other non-profit organizations. It was overwhelming, but I think because we had been training, we were as prepared as you can be.
You’re a graduate of NCMPR’s first Leadership Institute cohort, and it’s known for how well members of the group connected with one another. Talk to me about the importance of having those marcom peers.
Communications and marketing is a massive undertaking when you’re serving an entire college. You can always feel under water. To have people that actually go though that same experience, it normalizes, “OK, this is how everybody feels.” Let’s face it: Everybody on your campus but you knows how to do marketing and communications better. So when you finally get with those people who understand all the craziness at you go through—the demands or just the struggle, the challenges that you face—it is such a relief to find those sympatico relationships.
You’ve been at PCC for 15+ years, and I understand you’ve had a somewhat nontraditional path to your role.
After graduating, a friend of the family had a business in Texas for commercial air condition cleaning. (I) visited friends in southern California and had an epiphany of, “I don’t think this is what I wanna be doing with the rest of my life, and I think I could be happier in southern California.” (I got a job with) this minor league hockey team called the Long Beach Ice Dogs. I started off selling group and season tickets. And then I started to do their youth hockey clinics and make mascot appearances and do in-game activities and operations.
The owner of the team was a producer and a writer, and that got me interested in entertainment. I met somebody who had a loose connection to entertainment, and we went to a movie set, and my mind was blown. She had a step uncle who was the producer, and we hit it off. That’s how I interviewed and got my first job in film as a production assistant. It was the first live-action film that Disney had done in decades called “Meet the Deedles,” and it was Paul Walker’s first film. The person that got me into that ended up becoming my wife.
In film, you go project to project, and after that, I started cold calling what I saw on back of “Hollywood Reporter” for films and production. I got on this film that went direct to cable, and—it’s not a great title—it’s called “The Sex Monster.” It was (by) a comedian and a writer who was from where I was from in Detroit. It was a cast of Mariel Hemingway and Stephen Baldwin and Kevin Pollak. The project was legitimate, and I learned a lot because I got to wear a lot of hats. I met somebody on the film who brought me over to “Inspector Gadget.”
Then I was recommended to another crew and got on with Robert Zemeckis and got to work on “Castaway” and “What Lies Beneath.” (I) kept getting a little more responsibility. Then somebody recommended that I meet a producer. It was the worst interview I’ve ever had. That producer called. His assistant said, “Hey, just wanted to let you know he’s not gonna hire you, but he thinks you should come meet the director.” So I went back and interviewed to meet the director and became director’s assistant. I saw a film from the inception of an idea to the world press junket.
I had started to do a lot of writing on the side. My boss pitched (one of my ideas) to the king of the B movies, Roger Corman. And Roger Corman was interested in what I wrote and asked me if I’d be interested in directing it. So then I started directing and had a feature film out that is now a cult classic that comes around every Christmas (called “Santa’s Slay”).
I was really involved with Human Rights Campaign. I did some spots about “don’t ask don’t tell” and marriage equality. My wife was part of a nonprofit where they would go to Vietnam in the summer. I tagged along with them, and they said, “You can film and do a promo video for us.” I met somebody who worked at Pasadena City College. I was hired to do some videos there for a six-week project. Now I’ve gone way past my six-week term. It’s almost 16 years here.
What did you study in college?
Social science. What was I gonna do with that? I dunno.
What’s a marketing lesson you learned from your film experience?
You have to have answers and give creative direction all the time because you have to move this project forward. I think in the role I’m in now, there’s multiple projects happening at the same time, and people need answers to move it forward. There’s deadlines. So how do you keep all these balls in the air? How do you give people what they need so they can do their part of the project? And then how do you clear the obstacles or figure out where the resources are when resources are scarce to move it forward?