Meet Our Founder
Julie Budnik
The Nightingale Agency – What’s In A Name?
For Julie, it’s heritage and passion. She chose the Nightingale as a tribute to her father, John Slavik. Her maiden name, Slavik, means Nightingale in English.
The Nightingale, known for its beautiful and powerful song, perfectly represents Julie’s passion for telling bold and impactful stories through video and photography. She loves partnering with incredibly talented people who are the best in the business to create unique pieces for her clients. We are The Nightingale Agency.
Meet the Nightingale…
In another life, Julie would have been an orthopedic surgeon. Little did she know that all those years ago an elective class in Television Production would turn in to a career with more twists and turns than a Michael Crichton thriller.
She started out with an internship in a New York production house learning the business and trying to define her path. Deciding that she was meant to live where the pace of life was a bit less frenetic, Julie returned to the place of her youth Atlanta, Georgia. Her first year found her working at a small ad agency as a media buyer for a variety of clients.
While she learned a lot about the business side of her chosen career, Julie knew being buried in Arbitron books was not her passion. So, when the opportunity to join the Emory University Medical Television team arose, she jumped on it.
What could be better than combining her passion for video production and medicine? Julie worked on a variety of projects with the highlight being producing a video that documented the first Domino Heart – Lung Transplant in the state of Georgia. Bearing witness to moments like that solidified her love for telling a story through the visual medium. Julie’s freelance and corporate career followed her Emory days where her passion for storytelling grew.
Finally on her own, she had a chance to create the entire visual content for a corporate online training university and oversee its launch. It was immediately followed by a full-length documentary which premiered at the historic Fox Theatre in Atlanta and was broadcast on the History Channel and network affiliates. Suffice to say, her new career took off!
Julie said, “As I got farther down my chosen path, I realized more and more that our stories are the essence of what connects us and ties us to the human experience. With our stories we define who we are and what drives us and for me that is everything.”
Whether projects are large or small, helping clients craft their stories to be effective and compelling is what Julie truly loves to do.
