How SOJC master’s alum Zach Putnam turned a career in commercial video into people-centered nonprofit storytelling.
Story by Kaia Mikulka ’25
Video by Kaiya Laguardia-Yonamine, class of ’26
Photos courtesy of Zach Putnam
Meet Zach Putnam ’17
Current Job:
Owner & creative director at ZP Productions
Biggest career accomplishment so far:
Making a career out of telling stories that matter to me.
SOJC faculty or staff who made the biggest impression:
As the director of the Multimedia Storytelling Master’s program, Wes Pope's creative insights and support — both academically and professionally — have had the biggest impact on my experience with the SOJC, and I'm very grateful for that.
Most useful experience in the Multimedia Storytelling Master’s program:
Collaborating with both the amazing faculty and the incredibly talented students in the SOJC.
Best thing about the SOJC:
The people: the faculty, the staff and the students.
Zach Putnam spent years producing videos for major global brands, but the work left him wanting something more meaningful. That realization led him to the UO School of Journalism and Communication (SOJC) for a Multimedia Storytelling Master’s, where he began exploring stories rooted in people rather than products.
It was that shift that reshaped the direction of his entire career.
His love of visual storytelling started in seventh grade. Armed with his grandpa’s Sony Handycam, Putnam loved shooting video so much that he begged his teachers to let him film stop-motion videos instead of writing essays.
“I’ve been working that scam ever since,” Putnam said.
While he was pursuing sociology and media studies at Pitzer College, Putnam never realized that he could make a career out of his love for working with a camera and a story.
“I always thought that sociology was my serious degree and media studies was just something I did for fun,” Putnam said.
A sports job that sparked an interest in documentary
When he was living in Los Angeles post-grad, production opportunities were abundant. His first job was as a production assistant for an extreme sports TV show called “Surge," and it snowballed from there.
After only a few weeks, Putnam was promoted from production assistant to segment producer, filming and editing five minutes of the show every week.
As his career took off, Putnam began to understand where his passions were in the industry.
“I was filming athletes on skateboards jumping off a set of stairs, and then I would ask them, ‘How did you get here? What made you passionate about what you do? Why do you love this?’ And I always found that kind of stuff more interesting,” Putnam said.
Big productions left him wanting more creative control
After his stint on “Surge,” Putnam worked on big soundstages in LA, where he filmed commercials and major television series, but his interests always returned to small-scale productions.
“I wanted to be more creatively involved,” Putnam said. “I found when I was working on a big film set that it was much harder to reach the inner circle of people making creative decisions.”
As Putnam’s involvement in small freelance projects grew, he realized that he couldn’t do it all by himself. That’s how his company, ZP Productions, began to take shape.
“There was never a point where I said, ‘I want to start a production company,’" Putnam said. “I wanted to make videos. I wanted to tell stories. And I had to create a business to make that happen.”
After 10 years of professionally producing videos with ZP Productions, Putnam reached another roadblock: He felt disconnected from the work he was doing.
“I was working with Nike. I was working with Adidas. But helping people sell shoes just wasn’t really getting me up in the morning,” Putnam said. “I felt like there was more potential to do good in the world with my creative efforts.”
Putnam had always wanted to go into full-time teaching, and he thought a master’s program would provide him that opportunity and give him a much-needed career reset.
His journey in the Multimedia Storytelling Master’s program
Putnam, who was living in Portland at the time, had a hard time finding a master’s program focused on documentary filmmaking.
That is until Thomas Patterson ’16, a newspaper photographer, first introduced Putnam to the program’s director, Wes Pope, who would later become Putnam’s mentor.
When Putnam entered the master’s program in 2015, he discovered an area of video production that could make the impact he wanted: nonprofit storytelling.
During his time in the program, he received guidance from professors who shaped his experience in the classroom.
“The professors who had the most impact on me were Wes Pope and Professor of Practice Sung Park,” he said. Park was the co-director of the master’s program at that time and also taught photography classes, which played a large role in Putnam’s early coursework.
One of the standout elements of the program was Story Arc, a week-long intensive workshop where students collaborate in small teams alongside visiting filmmakers to produce short documentaries in just a few days.
“The workshop was one of the biggest influences on me,” Putnam said.
The master’s program gave Putnam the space to explore documentary work more deeply, allowing him to experiment with stories centered on real people and real issues.
“My time in the Multimedia Storytelling Master’s program gave me the structure, skills and network to create a portfolio of the kind of work I wanted to be doing, which was this very character-driven, human-centric, often issues- and advocacy-based storytelling,” Putnam said.
A refugee story that changed the direction of his work
One of the projects he worked on was a story about an Iraqi refugee family. The video was published on The Atlantic website, and a local nonprofit, Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition, reached out.
“They asked if they could use the piece for their donors, because it humanized the population and could show people what a refugee family looks like,” Putnam said. “It’s when I realised, ‘These kinds of short documentaries can be a really useful fundraising tool for a nonprofit organization.’”
Telling sensitive stories with care and intention
After Putnam finished his master’s, he dove headfirst into his new business model. Everything else snapped into place afterward.
ZP Productions now works with 50+ nonprofits a year to tell their stories, such as the short documentary for Canine Companions about a boy named Jaiden and his service dog Delphi, who helps Jaiden navigate life with muscular dystrophy. A piece for the Oregon Food Bank tells the story of a woman named Whitney, who baked giant cinnamon rolls during COVID to support healthcare workers and raise money for local food programs.
Working with such an impactful medium means putting careful thought into every part of the process. This includes making sure interviewees feel comfortable, either by using a small gear kit so the equipment doesn’t feel intrusive or by inviting a caseworker to be present to offer support.
“We’re often working with storytellers who are in a very vulnerable place and who are telling very sensitive, often traumatic stories about their lives,” Putnam said. “So we try to make the environment as unintimidating and welcoming as possible.”
They put a strong emphasis on ethical practice, trauma-informed interviewing techniques and making sure the storytellers feel in control of their own narratives and are free to tell the story their way.
“There’s often a lot of concern about this type of work exploiting people for their stories,” Putnam said. “But when done right, it can actually be a really empowering and cathartic experience for our storytellers.”
ZP Productions also uses a sliding fee scale that lets nonprofits pay what they can afford.
“I just try to be sensitive to the fact that nonprofits are often not working with the same kind of budgets as corporate clients,” Putnam said. “At the end of the day, it’s more important to me that we get to tell these valuable stories.”
How nonfiction storytelling helped his business grow
Putnam has been focusing on nonfiction storytelling for the past 20 years, and he’s learned that specialization builds trust, purpose and a clear identity in a field where many try to do it all.
“For many years, as a freelancer just trying to make a living, I tried to be a jack-of-all-trades,” Putnam said. “But when I made the pivot to focus on nonprofit storytelling, that’s when my business really started to grow.”
Nonprofit organizations have responded strongly to Putnam’s focus, valuing his ethical approach and the respect he brings to the people at the heart of each story.
“I think nonprofits really appreciate that I specialize in their field and that I have a sense of ethical storytelling,” Putnam said. “The way that I work with the subjects of these stories is not always something an average production company thinks about.”
That attention to care has paid off. Through word of mouth and referrals from nonprofits, ZP Productions has grown into a thriving and steadily expanding operation.
Sharing with the next generation
After graduating with his master’s degree, Putnam began teaching in Portland and eventually joined the University of Portland as an adjunct instructor. He has taught multimedia storytelling there for six years.
Two years ago, he also began teaching in the SOJC’s Multimedia Storytelling Master’s program, where he now serves as an adjunct instructor for Video Storytelling, a workshop offered once a year.
“It’s a very part-time thing that I do for fun because I love teaching,” Putnam said. “I love connecting with youth and getting people excited about learning.”
Through his production company, ZP Productions, Zach Putnam ’17 has worked with several fellow alumni of the SOJC Multimedia Storytelling Master’s program, including Caitlin Crowley MA ’24, left, and Ariane Kunze BA ’12, MA ’14. The ZP Productions team makes videos about everything from Portland Thorns soccer games to animals and the people who are the background of nonprofits.
Carrying human stories forward
Today, Putnam’s work is grounded in a simple idea: Whether he is collaborating with a nonprofit or guiding students through their first project in the classroom, his priority is always the people at the center of each story.
Currently, he is the director of photography on “Monumental,” a feature documentary about the statues that were removed in Portland in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. It's directed by fellow SOJC alum Erika Bolstad '20.
His career has shown him that meaningful storytelling comes from genuine connection, and it is this belief that continues to shape the way he approaches his craft.
“I'm just a big believer that stories are about people,” Putnam said. “And the more that you center humans in your storytelling, the more people connect and relate to it and the more impactful it can be.”
Kaia Mikulka is a 2025 SOJC grad who majored in advertising with a minor in business. Kaia’s current interests include art direction, design and brand identity, and their intersection with AI and human nature.