Professional Biography
Filiz Efe (McKinney) is a consummate media producer. She offers a unique combination of innovative creative vision, technical savvy, and solid professional grounding in strategic communications. Presently, Filiz is leveraging her visual storytelling talents as an independent multimedia producer for a number of clients such as Group Health and the University of Washington Department of Communication and Office of the Provost.
Filiz excels at distilling complex projects and events into engaging videos. She can work in a fast-paced journalistic environment as she did in her daily video coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show 2012 with digital media guru Hanson Hosein and her recent work with the international consortium LINGOs in Guatemala. She is also capable of long-term visual storytelling and research as evident with her work on the Knowledge in Action Project at the University of Washington College of Education. Over a year and a half, she produced 320+ hours of documentary footage for research purposes, then distilled it into a powerful 10-minute overview video for funders and superintendents, highlighting the lasting impact of project-based learning on high schools nationwide.
Demonstrating her mentorship abilities, Filiz also serves as the Adjunct Instructor for the Advanced Multimedia Storytelling course within the Master of Communication in Digital Media at the University of Washington. Leading to this role was her experience as an Electronic Media Assistant for the Media Relations and Communications Department. During her tenure with Media Relations, she created a storytelling website initiative and took the helm for creating content for the UW Huskies YouTube Channel. Recognized by her superiors and the media community at large, she won the 2011 Fund Raising and Alumni Relations Videos CASE District VIII Communication Award.
Boasting an international education that broadens her skillset as well as her worldview, Filiz completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Cinema-TV in 1996 at Dokuz Eylul University in Izmir, Turkey then forged a path as a marketing communications leader starting as the Communications Coordinator for General Motors in Turkey and moving up to become the Client Relations Director for the company Capital Events where she won the business of Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler, Jeep, General Motors, Renault, and Fiat.
Filiz earned her first Master’s Degree in Communication Strategies and Public Relations in 2008 from Galatasaray University in Istanbul. In 2010, she completed a Master of Communication in Digital Media from the University of Washington in Seattle where she now lives with her husband on a houseboat overlooking beautiful Lake Union.