In 2010, Jenny Ting approached Michele Gomes with an idea to launch a video production company. Working fulltime at her corporate job, Michele was wary about investing so much time into the project.

Schenker_Interchange Media_Final
“I thought, if it’s not meaningful, it’s not worth it,” said Michele. “I’m not going to waste my time and my life working for anyone else or any other thing if it’s not meaningful and if it’s not helping other people.”

With those guiding principles locked into place, Jenny and Michele then set out on building GSBA’s 2018 Green/Sustainable Business of the Year, a video production company built around highlighting critical environmental and social issues. But first, they had to come up with a name for their company.

“Jenny used to be a transportation engineer. She is the only person I know when driving down a highway and passing exits, instead of saying, ‘Let’s get off at this exit,’ she’ll say, ‘Let’s get off at this interchange,’” said Michele. “I thought, ‘That has an interesting ring to it. That has a lot of energy, I like the sound of that. Well, let’s merge our paths.’ She was an engineer, and I had worked in the arts industry, so we called it InterChange Media Art Productions.”

Over the past eight years, Jenny and Michele’s work has seen them travel across the country providing pre-production, production, and post-production editing services for everything from the National Geographic Channel, or the Liberian Medical Association USA, to the City of Tacoma, or the Pacific Science Center.

“Our clients range from everyone from the nonprofit world, to television shows, to those in the legal field, and in construction as well,” said Jenny. “We’ve worked with the Brainerd Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, the Washington State Bar Association, the Legal Foundation of Washington, and the Greater Seattle Business Association. Our videos have helped raise over $4 million (for nonprofits) since 2011.”

While Michele and Jenny’s involvement with GSBA dates back to InterChange’s first year in business, they’ve worked closely with the GSBA Scholarship Fund for the last five years, telling the stories of our scholars through feature videos. 056A8573

“Just the other day we were walking down Broadway and we ran into one of the scholars,” said Michele. “We’re grateful to be able to witness the generosity in the community. It’s a model organization and we’re really very happy to be a part of it.”

Through GSBA, InterChange became members of the NGLCC which has connected them with several of their largest clients.

“Because the mission of our company is to focus on life-sustaining values, we have focused on working with organizations who are trying to do good,” said Jenny. “There’s a lot of divisiveness right now in the world we live in and in our country. But because of the work we’ve done, we realize there are people in our communities and country who are doing the best they can. They see a problem, and they bring their communities together and solve the problems of today. So we actually have a lot of hope for the future that things will get better.”

An overarching theme across InterChange’s body of work is their focus on environmental topics and sustainability. Aside from their creative endeavors, Jenny and Michele’s offices are located in the Bullitt Center on Madison St., the greenest commercial building in the world.

“We do what we can on our part to be as carbon-free as possible. We work with conservation organizations which focus on conserving land or endangered species… Coming from the east coast originally, moving to the Pacific Northwest was so amazing to see that ‘sustainability’ is an everyday word here,” said Michele. “In other places where we’ve travelled for film festivals and such, it’s not really the case. It’s very exciting that there’s so much initiative that’s being taken here.”

Join us in honoring InterChange Media Art Productions during Justice for All: 38th Annual Business & Humanitarian Awards Dinner on Thursday, February 21 at Seattle Marriott Waterfront: http://bit.ly/2Rzxo3i