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How He Got to Sesame Street

With an ‘insane level of optimism,’ Jordan Geary ’04 creates children’s programming for the streaming generation. 

By Tim Stevens ’03

I

nside the Manhattan hub of one of the most well-known and important forces in children’s entertainment, I meet with Sesame Workshop’s Senior Director of Production and Development Jordan Geary ’04 in what feels, in many ways, like any old conference room, albeit one with a coveted view of Lincoln Center. But just outside, there’s a cornucopia of reminders that this is a place that centers childhood curiosity: brightly colored walls lined with soothing textured fabrics, life-sized chalk drawings of the Workshop’s most recognizable characters, and a plethora of statues, costumes and video screens reminding all of Sesame’s greatest hits. 

“I’ve worked in a lot of different places in a lot of different mediums, and you always start every meeting with ‘Why are you doing this?’ At Sesame, every project starts with ‘How are kids being underserved?’ It’s the purity of the mission,” Geary says of the 55-year-old nonprofit educational organization behind the iconic PBS mainstay Sesame Street. 

While he has worked both in front of and behind the camera throughout his varied career in show business, Geary has spent the last eight years—a period of rapid change for the entertainment industry—creating, developing and producing innovative Sesame Workshop programming, including Sesame Street Mecha Builders, Bea’s Block and Charlotte’s Web for HBO Max; Ghostwriter and Helpsters for Apple TV+; and hundreds of videos for YouTube Kids.   

But that certainly wasn’t his original plan. Back in his days as a Camel, Geary majored in music. But during his senior year, a pragmatic (if not pessimistic) lecturer laid out for his entire class how difficult it was to make music one’s living at that moment and how, at least in his estimation, it would only get worse. While several of his classmates remained committed, the speech resonated with Geary.

“It was almost time to graduate, which is pretty scary when you want to have a career pivot,” he confesses with a smile and shake of his head.

“What rescued me was 51łÔčÏșÚÁÏ being a liberal arts school,” he continues. “Not only did I go to music classes, I took classes in theater, art, animation, psychology and a score of other things—all stuff I use on a daily basis now.”

Ironically, it was his music background that gave him a leg up in show business.

“My very first job was working at MTV,” he recalls. “I was the guy who underscored reality TV shows with music.”

At MTV, Geary also got first taste of how quickly the entertainment landscape can shift.

“I guess you could say I worked during the high point of that MTV era. The TRL era. I worked on a show called Made. Business was booming, and I was part of the mayhem running between multiple offices all over the city.”