 I'm Tara Sands, and I started working in anime about 20 years ago. The very first anime job I had was on Pokemon, and I thought it was some very weird crazy cartoon, and when I did Bulbasaur for the first time, I said, well, what does he say? And he said, he just says his name, and I said, well, this show's not going anywhere. And I was completely wrong, so yeah, I was very lucky, 20 years later we were still talking about Pokemon, and I was very lucky. I played about 50 roles in the first eight seasons here. I'll give you my, this is my cheat sheet, because I forget who I played. So I keep my little list here. I mean, we were all really young, living in New York City, and there was no social media. So it wasn't as exciting as you might think, because we weren't getting Twitter at all, they emailed, and people didn't know, we were very anonymous. But for the first movie, we had the premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City, which was my favorite movie theater, it's an iconic movie theater, and I think when we saw the fans at that premiere and that night, it really made us realize that we were part of something enormous. I mean, I knew I was part of a hit show, but there's a difference between a hit show and a cultural phenomenon. And I always say, I always call Pokemon a gateway anime, because it really opened the world up of anime and Japanese culture and different things for kids and adults who maybe would not have seen it in a mainstream kind of way. So very cool to be a part of something like that. I mean, it felt like a movement, you know? I was a big talker. I got in trouble in school for talking, so I do that with kids. But as a little kid, I would quote commercials all the time. I was always just reciting them back. And when I was a little bit older, I was in high school, I went on my first voiceover audition, which I didn't know this was a job. I mean, I never thought of it as a job. I was an actor, I did theater and singing and all that, but I never thought of voiceovers as a job, though, I could do it. And my very first audition, I got the job, which, I mean, again, very lucky. Right place, right time, and my mom was like, wait, you get paid to do that? And I was like, yeah, this is crazy. And then I went and I studied it, and I did all the right things. I didn't take it for granted that this was gonna be a job I just fell into. I went to college, I studied theater, worked on using my voice in a way so that it would stay healthy and would lose it all the time. This is a loud convention, so I might lose it after this. But that's when I really realized this was a job that I wanted to do. And I knock on everything, I'm still doing this, so. A lot of people think that you have to have a unique voice to do this or a very flexible voice. The truth is, and I think this is true. And again, you'll get a different answer from every actor you talk to. I think it's about your ability to tell a story and communicate and act. It's an acting job at the end of the day. You might have the most beautiful voice in the world or the most rich, booming, powerful voice. But if you tell the story or deliver the lines in a way that doesn't feel real or genuine, probably not gonna work as much as a lot of actors and voice-over come from theater backgrounds. And I think that's because they're used to communicating with an audience. And then when they get in the booth alone, they're able to translate those skills. They don't necessarily meet the audience right there, which it's hard to do. I mean, you do this job to get a reaction and to interact and do all that stuff. And when you're doing this, you're in a booth by yourself. So that's when all of your training kicks in. I was asked today, it's so funny. A lot of people think this is a job you can kind of sign up for. And I was asked today, what do I do? To just do that, I was like, it's a journey. It's a commitment, if you want it to be a hobby, that's a different thing. But to do this full time is a commitment. And that's what I would tell people who want to do this. You have to really love it, you have to put in your time. Of course, you hear overnight success stories and they happen and I'm lucky. I got lucky, it was a different industry when I started. But I feel like when I tell my story, it makes people think that that's kind of an easy way in, but I had been working at it.