Most migrations to Hollywood require a leap of faith, and Leslie Hough's trip west was no different. In 1986 she called off her wedding three months before the big day, quit her job producing commercials and industrial films in Boston, and hit the road for California.

"I figured I owed it to myself to try and make it," she explains. "It was really foolish. I had no job and I didn't really know anything."

Despite some scattered success, she found the going tough in Los Angeles, and her parents were encouraging her to give up and come home--when Disney called. She interviewed for a production job on Beauty and the Beast on a Friday, explaining that she didn't know anything about animation and probably wasn't the person they were looking for. It didn't seem to matter. She was on the job by Monday.

Hough, who graduated with an English degree in 1980, is currently producing Stuart Little III for Sony pictures. She's worked for a number of studios on a variety of animated films, including 101 Dalmatians II, The Little Mermaid II, and Space Jam. She is also the founder of Thought Productions, which is developing live action and animation feature projects.

Hough manages the production of a film from start to finish. That means working with outside animation companies, offering creative input, overseeing content, and managing the film's budget and scheduling. "Ideally, you work as a team with the director," she explains, adding that some directors are better team players than others.

When she was at Kenyon, the closest movie theater was in Columbus, but the Kenyon Film Society brought French and Italian classics, along with a variety of other influential films, to campus. "That was my introduction to cinema," she says. "I didn't really realize at the time that you could actually get a job making movies, but those films were significant to me."