A FAST Company: Talent Agent balances school, professional life

BOSTON--When Nan Ding '02 steps through the small green doors of her 59 Temple Place office near Boston Common, the Quincy House resident becomes Cecilia, a licensed talent agent.

As the co-owner of Talent the Agency, a modeling and talent firm, Ding has lived a double life of sorts for the past three years, juggling academics with the rigors of the business world.

It's a balancing act she's gotten used to since coming to the United States from her native China in 1993.

Surprised by the pervasiveness of domestic violence against teenagers in the U.S., Ding in 1996 founded Friends and Shelter for Teens (FAST), the nation's first teen-founded and teen-run domestic violence prevention program.

"We were all underage, but we could still run an organization and have a mission," she says. "You can do a tremendous amount as your own boss." Members of the group performed plays about abusive relationships and produced a weekly cable access show.

But despite good publicity and enthusiasm from the volunteer participants, Ding says funding the group proved problematic.

"We were spreading the message and talking a lot about teen crime, but we just couldn't make the bill," Ding says. "While people were very supportive vocally, when it came to opening up their pockets it was more difficult."

It was around then that Ding happened to meet Cuong Lu, a professional model and actor who had founded Fashion for Shelter, a non-profit organization that raised money at fashion shows to support a shelter for battered Asian women.

Like Ding, Lu had encountered difficulty fundraising.

So when the two met, Ding says she recognized how similar their missions were.

"We thought, what better way than to go back to the old idea of using fashion to raise money," Lu says. "It was an easy transition."

The result was the 1997 founding of Talent the Agency, whose mission is to help fund "the new generation" of FAST and Lu's Fashion for Shelter.

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Housed in a small, sparsely furnished three-room office, Talent has an informal yet professional atmosphere.

"It's a fun, relaxed environment, particularly because of our age," Lu says. "We like to think that we're young, hip, cool and fun."

Lu is a statuesque woman who comes to work in jeans and a large white T-shirt.

Ding, who is quite carefully made up, wears a short skirt and fashionably tight top.

The two young women seem in their element as they move from room to room, filing papers and answering phone calls.

The office's few decorations speak to the organization's focus.

A small table near the door is practically overflowing with fashion magazines.

Above the magazines rests an inconspicuous framed photograph of Ding and 10 other teenagers posing with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Ding was invited to Washington two years ago to receive a Yoshiyama Award for Exemplary Service to the Community.

Lu's office walls are decorated with a few black-and-white photographs of models on their way down the runway.

A colorful magic marker and construction paper poster advertising FAST brightens one otherwise dull corner of the room.

Although Ding has had to retire from FAST since she turned 20--the organization is literally run only by teenagers--she says she keeps the poster as a memento of her first business endeavor.

Ding says that through Talent she can help Boston-area teenagers and college students develop marketable skills while supporting her cause.

The agency recently qualified for a theatrical license, which allows both Ding and Lu to work as licensed talent agents and managers--and gives her agency the freedom to represent any type of talent, such as models, comedians or ventriloquists.

When a potential talent signs up with the agency, he or she is assigned to one of four divisions: fashion, commercial, theatrical or promotional.

After graduating from the "new faces" division, where Ding and Lu act as advisors for aspiring talents, the clients are sent out for auditions.

The two partners receive 15 percent of whatever their more than 250 clients earn.

The promotional division, geared mainly to local college students, is Ding's brainchild.

Through this division, she helps college students find promotional work that requires minimal experience.

Although her business has not yet attracted large numbers of Harvard students, she says the promotional division helps to keep her in touch with aspiring talent in the surrounding community.

"The goal of this division is for us to have a resource to meet college students," Ding says. "If we can open the door to future talents, then they go on to make big money, and we're all happy."

When she is not finding promotional work for college students or attending school plays to scout out talented actors, Ding tackles the office's accounting and bookkeeping.

And she also goes to class.

Ding, who is known around campus as Nan (she only goes by Cecilia at the office), says that this semester she managed to squeeze all her classes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesdays so that she could spend the rest of the week in the office.

"I still feel like I'm not here enough, so when I have a vacation, I work every day," she says.

It's a difficult juggling act, Ding says.

"I try to keep up school, but I know I end up compromising both sides," Ding says. "Both school and work are really full-time commitments."

But Ding says she does not regret a any of the time she has spent on Talent.

Not only the agency's success provided much-needed financial security for FAST, but Ding and Lu promise to revive Fashion for Shelter.

They have been so successful that the partners are even planning to move to a new, bigger studio office downstairs.

But despite her present success, Ding is still looking forward and setting new goals.

"We have so much potential," Ding says. "We want to generate talent to send to Hollywood and to New York."

Ding smiles as she looks around her office, describing the new space she will soon move into and future plans to expand the agency.

"I see us here for a long time," she says.