Our Fearless Team

Jen Zug - Creative Director

Jen brings years of writing experience to the Lilipip team, using her love of story telling to help shape the scripts and storyboards that give birth to future animations. As a blogger and active twitter user, Jen's approach to script writing is quick and to-the-point, catering to the short attention spans of today's web surfers. After a lifetime of writing stories, producing short home movies, and creating the proverbial "mix tape" for every occasion, Jen can hardly believe she gets to do all this for a living.

 Linda Steen - Project Manager

Linda's love for business and the arts means you'll rarely find her in the same place twice. She's always looking to the next step for a new cutting edge in human interaction, business development, and meta-trends. An animation entitled 'Linda's Happy Place' would roll like this: she has just met new friends and is discussing philosophy of art or business systems. Simultaneously she is seen furiously sketching out her ideas of the same story on any handy scrap of paper. At the end of the evening some question has been solved and new connections have been made. So 10 years of creative project management plus lots of fun in the arts as performer, director, and writer equals a lot of passion for creating great promotional art.

Ashley Fry - Project Manager

"Ready camera 2 -and take2. Camera 4 get me some nice silhouettes through that spotlight on the drummer. Ready 4 -take4." Directing live camera work at concerts across America launched Ashley into the crazy world of media. After living on a tour bus for years, it was time to trade in her backstage 'blacks' for an edit bay that didn't move. Soon music videos and retail ads found their way through the door. Quickly growing in the craft of post production editing, Ashley moved home to the Northwest where she now edits and shoots commercially. Between Lilipip and her own company's film development, Ashley pulls from her range of experience to craft compelling, effective stories.

Carina Wood - Project Manager

Born at a young age, Carina swore she would do either two things in her life, become an author or work in media.  Why not both?  From Oregon, to Hawaii, India, Texas, Los Angeles, and back to the Pacific Northwest, gaining more than an education, she has completed novels, wrote and made a number of short films, worked over ten years in media writing, directing and producing, and provided ample dog care for her old siberian husky.  The best part is, she gets to fulfill her passion!

Charlie Barr - Account Manager

Charlie has spent the last 12 years straddling two different worlds.  One foot in business development and the other in the art community.   At Lilipip he has the opportunity to combine them both.  Through his project management and sales experience he has worked with both Fortune 500 companies and mom & pops shops.  When he’s not donning the proverbial business suit he’s in his studio working on paintings for the galleries representing his work in the Pacific Northwest, Arizona, and Florida.  This gives Charlie a unique perspective as he works with clients to realize a creative message to effectively drive their business.

Ksenia Oustiougova - Founder & CEO

After the birth of her second child, Ksenia quit her job as an architect to make educational animations for toddlers. She turned to UW for help with her business plan, and her team won the Best Product Idea Prize in the 2006 Business Plan Competition, which served as a launching pad for the company. Over the course of the past 3 years, she changed the business model twice, first from production company to licensing content as a filtered "YouTube" for kids in 2007, and then to the current model in the summer of 2008. Ksenia's "tell it like it is" style combined with her strategic use of social media in business development set her apart as a clear example of the contemporary female entrepreneur. 

 Bryan Zug - Director of Business Development

If you wander into a Seattle unconference like Mind Camp, BarCamp, or Presentation Camp, you'll often find Bryan egging folks into heated discussion over which of their favorite sci-fi/fantasy characters would win in a battle. While a session called “Starbuck vs. Samwise in a Fight” may seem, at first blush, like all hook / no substance - participants quickly find themselves in a lively exchange about what it means to thrive in an age where attention is the scarcest resource. That's when the deceptively simple communication strategy of Lilipip's Director of Business Development becomes crystal clear. People learn more and retain longer when the stories are interesting and the content is compelling. This is what 13+ years in the trenches of interactive strategy teaches you.

We're the first open-source creative

We work with writers, illustrators, animators, voice-over artists, and musicians from all over the world - feel free to check out their websites. If you're an artist and are interested in joining us, please send us samples of your work, we'll be in touch.

Our Creative Team