A WORLD OF THEIR OWN Alumni find fulfillment through creation
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by KIMBERLY WEINBERG, Portraits editor
20 PORTRAITS
book addiction during his childhood in Philadelphia and belonging to a band in high school. At his mother’s request, he majored in social science and business management at Pitt-Bradford. “Before my Ph.D. and M.B.A., I was horrible in business,” Simpson said. “I had a class where we were supposed to be a company. It never felt connected with real life.” It took running his own media company, 3 Heads Productions, for him to understand what his professors had been trying to teach him. In the early 2000s, Simpson was a cubicle dweller working as a mortgage loan officer. “The guy in the next cubicle had written a script, and we both knew a friend in common who had gone to film school,” he said. “We decided to have the three of us shoot the script. That was a debacle, but I learned a lot from the fact that we didn’t finish the short film.” With what he learned on that project he, his wife and a spring/summer 2019
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lton Simpson ’88, Jamie Lackey ’06 and Paul Stefko ’06 have found a healthy and sometimes even profitable way to escape the substantial stresses of today’s world. They make their own worlds where they can vanquish mobsters, dragons or gorgons as creators of fantasy short films, comic books, short stories and roleplaying games. “I think life is very serious right now, and people are looking for an escape where they can relax and be themselves,” said Simpson, the creator, writer, producer of films streaming on Amazon Prime and comic books. “It’s why people are interested in different types of fantasy and sci-fi.” The genres are bigger than ever. In 2018, the five top grossing films were either superhero movies or sci-fi. Simpson has been attracted to the genre since he was young. He has always been creative, beginning with a library
