Everyone finds their way into adventure storytelling in a different way, but Anya Miller鈥檚 journey to working on film projects, creative campaigns, and podcasts for is definitely one of the less straightforward ones. It started with a career in architecture, then bedbugs, then cancer, then a mid-career internship making the same salary she made as a lifeguard in high school, then a job at a big design and creative firm, then finally going to work with two of her longtime friends, Fitz and Becca Cahall. Oh, and lots of climbing, snowboarding, and mountain biking.
You鈥檝e probably seen something Anya had a hand in making, even if you didn鈥檛 know it. As the director of Brand and Creative Strategy at Duct Tape Then Beer, she does a little bit of听creative strategy, art direction, graphic design, film production, story development, photo editing, and whatever else needs to be done as part of a small team that makes two adventure podcasts (听and ), and films like 听and .
Duct Tape Then Beer鈥檚 client list includes a lot of the biggest names in the outdoor industry: REI, Outdoor Research, Patagonia, The North Face, the Access Fund, Protect Our Winters, National Geographic, Black Diamond, Chaco, Arc鈥檛eryx, Subaru, and others. I鈥檝e been lucky to work with Anya on a short film project and see how she works (and听draws), and why Fitz and Becca invited her to be part of their creative team.
I asked Anya to sit down for an interview a few weeks ago鈥攈ere鈥檚 our conversation, edited for length:
On Growing Up in Chattanooga
I鈥檓 the youngest of four kids. I was born in Canada in a small town called Hespler, Ontario. I have two sisters and a brother, and they are the best. My siblings really shaped my ideas of what I thought was cool, what I wanted to do with my life. Be good at school. Be good at sports. Be able to talk with anyone with curiosity. I always wanted to do everything that they did. My brother says that my super power is absorbing other people鈥檚 super powers. I think of it more as just learning from rad people.
My parents were divorced when I was five鈥攊t was a really rough relationship and so I was a pretty stressed out kid. When I was 12, my mom decided to move from Canada back to her home town of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Moving to the South was probably one of the best things that happened in my life because it put me in a more nature-focused place. In Canada, we lived in a small old town with stone buildings and neighborhoods full of kids. Getting outside meant going to the local school and hitting a tennis ball up against a giant brick wall, cruising on bikes in the street, or watching my brother and his friends skateboard in the Taco Bell parking lot. When I moved to Tennessee, we moved in with my grandmother, Gigi, who was like a second mom to me. She lived on a small acreage that had been part of her family farm for three generations. She lived and passed on the same plot of land where she was born鈥攕o land was important. There were tomato plants, frogs, lightning bugs, fresh mint and magnolia trees鈥攕pace to just run around. We were close to a lake, so I would run down there to feed ducks and swim.
There were a lot less kids nearby, so I spent a lot of time with my sister Michaela and Gigi outside鈥攚orking in the yard, playing checkers, and drinking sun tea. Moving to Tennessee really set a different tone for the rest of my growing up and for my life.
My family was not an outdoor adventure family at all. My mom was a single parent with four kids, so she got us into as many organized sports programs as possible to deal with our energy levels and probably just to free up some personal time for her.
I did gymnastics, played soccer and tennis, and eventually got into diving. Those sports were great for strength and discipline, but I experienced a lot of injury in high school, specifically in soccer. It seemed like I was working really hard athletically, only to then be at the mercy of some overly aggressive hack on the field.
I broke my leg the summer before senior year of high school and basically was just done with soccer鈥擨 hated every bit of it at that point, so I washed my hands of team sports. My sister was a pro cyclist at the time and gave me her old aluminum Trek 1500 and I started riding all the time. It changed my idea of distance and freedom. At this point, I was figuring out where I wanted to go to university. I hadn鈥檛 ever even been west of the Mississippi at that point鈥攂ut somehow I thought that I where I wanted to be.
On Moving Out West
There was an image鈥攁nd this does not sound that deep at all, but it was an image on听the old rubber-banded Patagonia Capilene packaging. Steph Davis was climbing some crack. I had never rock climbed in my life and I didn鈥檛 know who Steph Davis was at the time, but what I saw was just a super-strong female and she had chalk on her face and her hair was whipping in the wind. Didn鈥檛 look perfect, looked like she was trying hard in a wild place, and I wondered where she was. I was inspired by her, but I was also inspired by the place and the sea of rock she was moving through. I鈥檇 never been to a place so arid or stoic.
None of my family lived out west then. All of my siblings were either still in Canada or in the southeast. I just thought the west seemed amazing. I was the last of four siblings at home, and I made no secret of the fact that I wanted to go far away, not have a support network, and just see how it would go.
I remember sending away to University of Colorado and getting this information packet that had a VHS tape in it. I wish I still had it! It was so ridiculous. It had 80s synth music and this dude rollerblade shredding around the campus, giving a sort of tour. It wasn鈥檛 a causal rollerblade tour. The guy was getting rad on campus and pointing out different buildings! As I said, I was kind of a stressed out kid in school. I made straight A鈥檚 and was valedictorian. From that rollerblading video, I guess it seemed like CU was a good place for a stressed out, sometimes-too-serious kid to go.
So I applied to the School of Environmental Design and Architecture, and went.
On Drawing
I can鈥檛 remember not drawing. I was always drawing things. In hindsight, I probably just should鈥檝e gotten an art degree. But I think when I was making the college decision, all of my siblings were sociology majors or history majors, which can be cryptic majors to develop a career from. I think I went into school with a practical driven idea that I would know exactly what I was going to do when I got out of school if it killed me.
Considering the different programs that CU offered, it looked like their environmental design program was good. It focused on sustainable architecture and reusing听old buildings, which I was interested in鈥攎y mom collected antiques and loved making old things new. Plus, I thought architecture was practical. Theoretically, that major equals a decently clear career path after school. Maybe almost too clear of a path鈥攊t can be hard to stray from.
I was always drawing as a kid. I remember getting Calvin and Hobbes cartoon books for holidays. I鈥檇 go through the pages and duplicate all of the cartoons, hundreds of them. I didn鈥檛 trace them鈥擨 just redrew them identically, right down to the word bubbles and writing. I did that with Snoopy, Garfield, and Far Side comics, too. I really liked cartoons in general. They were funny, they had a dry sense of humor that reminded me of my brother. He cultivated my sense of humor, for sure. He helped explain some of the more complex cartoons and cultural concepts in them.
I would draw on my own, too. For hours at a time. Sharks and birds. My own hands. I鈥檇 look at magazine covers and draw them. Time magazine鈥檚 person of the year. National Geographic鈥. There were a bunch of skateboard magazines sitting around the house鈥攎y brother was a skateboarder. I鈥檇 try to redraw the Thrasher logo, which is a really tricky logo to redraw, by the way! I liked looking at that stuff because it seemed raw and cool, for whatever reason.
On Finding Climbing
My first time climbing was on Flagstaff in Boulder. The granodiorite up there is this weird conglomerate rock鈥攊t is pretty grippy until its little embedded pebbles get polished. I remember just thinking how cool it was up there. It was so accessible! And at that point, it was pretty quiet there. I lived close to the trails, so I could jog up Flag. I loved that I could go whenever I wanted to. Even at night. I didn鈥檛 have a car in university. I didn鈥檛 have a car in high school, either, so I fell in love with things that I could do right out of my door with little equipment or support from anyone.
Climbing wasn鈥檛 like skiing or snowboarding鈥攜ou needed a good chunk of money and a car to do those things. Climbing, and bouldering in particular, was something that I could walk out my door, do on my own and have complete control over my experience. With team sports, I couldn鈥檛 control my experience. It felt like other people could injure me. At least I (kind of) had control over whether I hurt myself.
The transition from bouldering to tying into a rope was pretty quick for me. I ended up stumbling into a really good group of people that were better climbers than I was. Probably within the first few months of climbing, I drove with them out to Wild Iris. I remember not really understanding the concept of grades that much, just deciding what I wanted to try based on aesthetics and the encouragement of my friends. I鈥檇 say, 鈥淭hat thing looks good! I鈥檒l try that.鈥 It was really important to me to know that my friends believe in me. They did, and I got better quickly.
It was within the first month of climbing that I wanted to try to lead something. Everything about the sport was exciting鈥擨 just wanted something of my own. And it seemed like something I could have, in terms of just being able to develop my skills at whatever pace I wanted. I climbed so much (and probably so badly) when I started that I constantly had injured fingers and weeping skin.
On Her First Job
After graduation, the job market was okay. I wanted to stay in Boulder for a little bit. Right out of school, I got a job at a small, residential architecture firm. They were modern and fun and also did a bit of branding and graphic design for the buildings they made. That rollerblade video was full of shit鈥擨 worked my ass off in school. I could have gotten a job at a bigger, better-paying firm, but a smaller shop felt more 鈥渕e.鈥澨鼳 lot of people in my class were going to giant corporate firms down in Denver or other cities, but I was more interested in smaller scale residential design鈥攁nd I was more interested in working closely with clients and staying close to the mountains.
That shop was a safe place to escape to after being intense (again) throughout school. I didn鈥檛 want to jump into a high-intensity job. There, I got exposed to graphic design, brand design, and architecture. They did a lot of the drawing by hand, which I loved. Right then, things were teetering on being all computer-based. Eventually, we did take all drawings into the computer, but all of the concept iteration was hand-drawn. All of the renderings were hand-drawn, which I got to do and loved.
On Leaving Boulder
The person I was dating at the time is now my husband, and I think after about a year in Boulder, Charlie and I were pretty ready to take off. We decided to take a trip to South America, go to Chile and Argentina to go snowboarding and skiing down there.
We were at a resort called Las Le帽as, which has an amazing zone of lift-access/assisted听backcountry. One day, Charlie and I were riding separately. It was really crap conditions and I kind of got off my line and was a bit lost. I saw these people just beyond me on this plateau with sastrugi all over it. It was sunny, but windy, like hard-to-move type wind. And I remember seeing a few people and thinking, 鈥淭hey look like Americans,鈥澨齀 screamed out to them, 鈥淗ey, can I ride with you guys?鈥
So we basically get together on that random plateau in Argentina. Maura Mack, her husband Jason, and Adam DesLauriers. We rode a shitty, icy line together and had a hilarious experience in super bad conditions. We got down and decided to go get beers and hamburgers and meet up with their buds, Lel Tone and Tom Wayes. Charlie joined us at the end of the day, and we all went to a hot spring and had non-stop, hilarious conversations. They felt like our people and they told us we should move to Tahoe. A week after we got back from Argentina, we decided to go to Tahoe and check it out. They set us up with a place to live, I got an architecture job, and Charlie started working at Granite Chief, tuning skis. Plus, it was only a short drive from Bishop. I was sold.
On Meeting Fitz and Becca Cahall
That first year in Tahoe, I spent a lot of time in this really tiny climbing gym, if you could even call it that. . It was really just a used gear shop that had a room in the back with some holds on a woody. But I spent a ton of time there, looking for friends like those I had left in Boulder.
There weren鈥檛 a ton of women climbing in there. I saw Becca Cahall鈥攕he was strong and I decided, 鈥淭hat girl鈥檚 gonna be my friend.鈥 I like to say that I picked her up in the climbing gym. We started talking, I met Fitz, and Charlie and I started going over to their place in Kings Beach every week for dinner. Becs makes a mean lasagna. It鈥檚 amazing at that point in time in my life how much time I had鈥攐r made鈥攖o connect and chat with people.听听听听听听听
We started climbing with those two. At the time, I think Fitz was in the very early stages of starting The Dirtbag Diaries and he was doing a bunch of writing for print publications. Becca was often gone during the summers, doing field biology work in Oregon. And Fitz and I would climb a good bit together in the summers when she was gone. The friendship really started from there.
They moved to Corvallis, Oregon, for Becca鈥檚 graduate program. From there, they moved to Seattle. Charlie and I were still in Tahoe, but we kept in touch with those guys and saw them whenever they came through. We were in Tahoe for just over seven years and I was working at an architecture firm there. I was getting really tired of designing 3,000 square-foot 鈥渃abins鈥澨齠or people from the Bay Area. Architecture was barely providing a living in a mountain town that鈥檚 difficult to make a living in. But it wasn鈥檛 really filling me up creatively.
Charlie was tending bar, skiing a bunch, and tuning skis. At some point, he wanted more of an intellectual pursuit. He started looking around at programs to get his MBA. He was interested in getting into the creation of ski clothing and technical outerwear. We were poking around for schools for him鈥攚e chose Seattle because of its creative opportunities and proximity to mountains. He had also grown up in Washington, so family was a draw. It was a huge benefit that Becca and Fitz had already made camp here.
Charlie got into the University of Washington and I found a really great position at a firm called . I basically walked into a dream job in an outrageously bad job market. So it just seemed like everything fell into place. Then I found myself in the city. I never really thought I would live in a city, but all of a sudden, I was.
Pretty soon after we moved to the city, I convinced Charlie to take half of a year of his MBA program in France. So I took an eight-month sabbatical from the architecture firm, even though I hadn鈥檛 really been there that long. I spent the season climbing in Fontainebleau. We lived in the 11th in Paris, and traveled around to Italy and Switzerland to do some climbing and snow sports.
On Cancer
When we got back from Europe, I ended up getting a rash all over my body. I thought I had developed a food allergy, so I went to a doctor and I went to a naturopath to get tested for food allergies.
She said, 鈥淣o, sweetie, you don鈥檛 have an allergy. You have bed bugs.鈥 They were pretty common in France at that time. She told me how to get rid of them and offered to do my annual exam while I was there (she was a nurse practitioner, too). She does a breast exam on me and she says she feels something. A lump. I could tell she felt like it was bad. She said, 鈥淚 think you should go get this checked out.鈥澨鼺or whatever reason, I just knew there was something wrong. I hadn鈥檛 been feeling well, but I couldn鈥檛 really attribute anything. Had I not brought those bed bugs back from Europe, I might not have found the tumor. I fucking love bed bugs.
So the very next day I got in for a biopsy at one of the cancer centers in Seattle, and it came back as triple negative breast cancer. That鈥檚 an invasive form of breast cancer. All at once and very quickly, things slowed down for me and sped up, if that makes any sense. I went through a series of tests to see what the extent of the cancer was鈥攆ull body scans to see if it the cancer was anywhere else. Waiting for those results was terrifying. I was trying to figure out my course of treatment, and just trying to understand and grapple with everything.
I was whisked into chemotherapy, and that was a crazy, awful chunk of treatment. It stops all fast-growing cells鈥攍ike cancer鈥攆rom producing in your body. That鈥檚 why your hair falls out鈥攜our hair is a fast-growing cell. I decided to take some control and shave my head before my hair really fell out. It just seemed like a helpless situation.
Can you believe that I had a wig made of my own hair? I had it made, and then I never wore it. Not once. It just sat on this weird styrofoam head in the corner of the bedroom the entire time. It was like this weird little animal sitting in the corner. I don鈥檛 know why I had it made. Like a security blanket, I think. When I put it on it felt like I was lying about what I was going through.
Chemotherapy just makes you feel acid washed from the inside out, but it鈥檚 what they said was the best and only treatment for my cancer type. Afterwards, I had surgery to take out the tumor, followed by radiation. You don鈥檛 fight cancer, you just weather it.
On Deciding to Switch Careers
Coming out of cancer, I realized that architecture wasn鈥檛 what I wanted to be doing. I wasn鈥檛 happy on a day-to-day basis. At that point, after all the cancer stuff, I realized I could pull the plug on architecture and not feel bad at all. I deeply realized that time is short and that I didn鈥檛 want to spend a single day doing something that I didn鈥檛 love. So I started looking around for other things.
I sat down with my pen and paper, as I usually do. I drew out my problem. I basically tried to draw an infographic of the things that I liked about architecture and the things that I didn鈥檛. I mapped out all of the tasks that I did in between the beginning and end of an architecture project, starting from the first client meeting and ending with them moving into their new or redone house.
Overlayed on the project timeline, I drew an up-and-down heartbeat line. It trended up when I loved the project tasks, and it would go down when I really didn鈥檛 like what I was having to do. This line didn鈥檛 correlate to difficulty of task鈥攁ll jobs have hard parts that need grit to get through.听But this helped me understand what I didn鈥檛 like and why.
When I looked at my infographic of my life, it seemed like such a small portion of every project had a loving heartbeat line. The ratio of I love this to I really don鈥檛 was just not enough. This visual helped me communicate with people who I was having coffee chats or meeting with, exploring new careers and positions. I could point to the graphic and say these are the things that I鈥檓 doing in every project that a) I really excel at and b) fill me up emotionally and really satisfy me as a professional and a creator. Clear, insightful visuals are so key to having good conversations.
I met with a guy who worked at a brand agency. He said, 鈥淵ou really seem like a creative strategist or a brand strategist.鈥 I said, 鈥淥kay cool鈥攚hat is that?鈥 Basically, a strategist makes creative plans and develops foundational ideas that give meaning and inspiration to projects. Strategy helps teams understand and fulfill creative goals. I wasn鈥檛 sure I understood it at first, but I finally had a job title to search for online. I didn鈥檛 even know that job existed.
So I started looking for jobs as a creative strategist. I came across an internship that was being offered. This job was definitely aimed at someone ten years younger than me. It was at a brand and design firm here in Seattle called . Basically, I took my infographic and my architecture portfolio into the interview. I got the job.
How Brand Strategy Relates to Architechture
Essentially, I figured out that creating a house or a space for somebody to use is really similar to creating a brand. In the beginning of an architecture project, you meet the people that you鈥檙e going to be working with, the people that will live in that house. You understand how they want to live, the types of spaces they鈥檒l need for their specific lifestyle. You understand the land they have to build on, whether it鈥檚 really hilly or flat. You understand the adjacent buildings and you decide how you want your building to respond to those around it. Stand out? Fit in? Be crazy or subdued? Be earthy or modern? You consider budget and you consider the builders that will actually create the building. You chart a creative course.
At the end of the day, that planning process that I learned in architecture can be applied to almost any creative project, especially brands. You take a brand. You look at the landscape鈥攚here is it going to sit? You understand the brands that sit around it. You consider how your brand is going to respond to, compliment, or go against those adjacent brands. You learn about the people who will be living in that brand鈥攖he people who are running it and the people who will be purchasing its goods. You set a creative intention that helps develop a solid plan for your building or your brand. Or solid plan for making a film. Or an advertising campaign. Or an event. Whatever that is, there can always be a front-end structuring and creative process that helps you launch into 鈥榤aking鈥 in a considered, intentional, and hopefully听unique way.
On Doing an Internship in the Middle of Her Career
I got the internship and it was three months long鈥攖errible pay, of course. But I learned a lot. I had also been in the professional world for ten years at that point. I got hired the day my internship ended, and started working as a brand and creative strategist.
The internship was definitely a proxy for going back to school. I鈥檇 definitely recommend it. That job gave me amazing experience and mentors. There, I was able to develop my own techniques of working through brand problems with large teams. Strategists shape clear creative ideas so that it is easier for multiple people to express them.
On Joining Duct Tape Then Beer
I worked at Hornall for several years. It was the type of agency that had ping pong tables and kegs of beer and free cereal for breakfast. All of those things meant that they wanted you to never leave! I worked a ton, my climbing dropped off. I felt pretty unhealthy. Creatively, I was producing a lot of awesome stuff, working with big brands and talented designers鈥攂ut eventually it felt a bit soulless. You can only use your intelligence and creativity to sell potato chips for so long.
I wanted to be climbing more. Through those first six years in Seattle, I was of course hanging out with Becca and Fitz. We loved talking about professional and creative stuff. I was always tracking on what Duct Tape Then Beer was doing. One night, I went over to their house and held a little facilitated visual Post-It party to chat with them about creative goals, what they were working on and what they wanted to be. At this point, they had positioned themselves pretty squarely as a film production company and of course The Dirtbag Diaries were still going strong.
When I was at that large agency, I saw people making films and content for brands in categories other than the outdoor industry. I saw how campaigns were being created and how solid, unique creative was being monetized. Basically, I wanted to help Duct Tape expand what they offered. People were coming to Duct Tape saying, 鈥淲e want a film.鈥 And then Fitz and Becca would ask,听鈥淲hat do you need a film about and why?鈥 The brands rarely had good or solid answers for these questions. Maybe they didn鈥檛 actually need a film鈥攎aybe the brand actually needed a perspective.
Essentially, Duct Tape Then Beer had been creating emotional, unique perspectives for brands and expressing them in films. The value though, for the first years, had been being placed on the film outcome rather than the strategy and thinking that needs to be done before a good story is told.
On What She Does at Duct Tape Then Beer
Fitz and Becca told me they thought they could hire me. That was a big deal. I was really wary of working with good friends. I had always kept my personal life and work pretty separate. I just didn鈥檛 want to ruin our friendship by working together every single day, or having weird professional interactions with folks that I love so much. Eventually, those guys just talked me down from the ledge. They said their first priority was keeping our friendship solid鈥攁nd they thought we could make some really cool things together. They said we would only work with brands and strengthen and nurture connections to the natural world. They said I could go climbing. That was it. I ended up leaving the big agency and joining Duct Tape to develop a brand strategy offering so that we could answer the brand questions before the topic of the creative output was even addressed.
Before a creative expression (film, messaging, campaign) is ever decided upon, we crystallize emotional ideas that will elicit action. How will we express an emotional idea? Maybe a film. Maybe a podcast. Maybe new headlines or messaging that gets rolled out over a few years. Maybe a social media campaign. Maybe an event. But we always start with clear, emotional ideas.
There aren鈥檛 many projects that come through Duct Tape Then Beer that I don鈥檛 have some sort of hand in. But you could say that about all of us鈥攚e all touch every project. Our skills overlap and are complementary. I make all of the pitch decks. I don鈥檛 like to admit that I am a writer鈥攊t was always so hard for me鈥攂ut it has flowed as I鈥檝e gotten older. If it鈥檚 a story that Fitz discovered, he鈥檒l write it up and then I design a compelling story deck鈥攕ometimes with infographics鈥攖o get our ideas across. I do a lot of strategy work for us internally and for our clients. I do the graphic design and edit the photos that come out of our office, functioning as the art director and social media person. But my official title is director of brand and creative strategy.
Our podcasts need a good bit of overarching creative strategy. We don鈥檛 just haphazardly assort stories and guests. We look at culture and we try to understand what鈥檚 going on and try to actively seek out stories that express complex, emotional topics in today鈥檚 world. I鈥檒l work to help shape this topic mix.
At the helm of Duct Tape, we鈥檝e got five full-time people. We are all seasoned creatives and high-functioning human beings that love to contribute and work hard for each other. I think that鈥檚 what makes project good鈥攚hen several smart people contribute in a considered way.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=0_sfXPcUTis
On Snowboarding vs. Skiing
I snowboard. I skied when I was tiny in Canada a couple of times. Since being in Colorado, I鈥檝e been a snowboarder. More and more, I stay out of resorts and am loyal to my splitboard and to snow that makes no noise. I鈥檝e had three torn ACLs on one leg. I鈥檝e torn my meniscus three times. So yea, I ride snow that makes no noise. Luckily, soft snow is usually easy to find in Washington.
Advice
It was scary and hard for me to leave behind a profession that I鈥檇 put a lot of time and energy into. But I knew, deep down, that I didn鈥檛 enjoy it. My advice? Take some time and be really honest with yourself about what you like doing (and why) and what you don鈥檛 like doing (and why). Because every job is going to have something that sucks about it. Really anything worth doing is going to be pretty hard at some point, so the answer, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 like doing this because it鈥檚 too hard,鈥 is bullshit.
But I do recommend that process that I went through. Visually mapping out what filled me up emotionally and what depleted me emotionally. Visualizing that was so helpful. And clear. And it helped me realize what I wanted to be spending my time doing. Continually revisiting those two questions: What do I like doing and why? What do I not like doing and why? Continually revisiting those has been the most helpful thing for me over the last ten years.