Lili Toutounas: Reflections on 15 Years of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center
December 13, 2022
Lili Toutounas was in charge of keeping everything organized and running while she was at the Cooney Center. And while people have confused her for a stern British lady while on the phone, she’s not nearly as old as she claims below.
I like to say that I have spanned three decades of my life at Sesame Workshop.
It all started in 2010. I had just returned from living abroad for several years and was looking for a job (e.g. sending in resumes from the neighborhood Starbucks). Truthfully, I hadn’t thought about Sesame Street, or the impact it had on my childhood in years, or maybe, ever.
Lili at the Learning from Hollywood forum at USC-Annenberg, 2011.
But I grew up as an 80s kid who had three channels on our television, and PBS was one of them. Maria was my second mother. I didn’t know Elmo yet, but I did love Snuffleupogus. As I sipped my latte on that fateful day, I remember the gleam in my eye when I encountered a job posting for an Administrative Coordinator at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. A smile washed over me, as if no time had gone by from the days I dialed the TV to PBS as a kid. Needless to say, I was thrilled when I got a call to interview. I remember walking into the office at 1900 Broadway into a sea of crayon-hued carpeting, with Muppets peering out from every corner. “Oh my gosh, I HAVE to work here.” I think it was Michael Levine who brought me into a now- replaced conference room to interview. The rest is history!
I worked at the Center for most of my tenure at Sesame. I am now in Human Resources where I oversee employee engagement and alumni relations, a natural progression that working at the Cooney Center prepared me for. I don’t know if I can put into words how grateful I have been for this experience. To work under Joan’s legacy has been an honor. I continue to tell anyone who will listen that the smartest people I have ever met are my JGCC colleagues. They shaped me as a person and carried me into an amazing career at Sesame Workshop. Happy Birthday, Joan Ganz Cooney Center! It has been the best ride.
