Photo courtesy of Stephanie Sheronovich Melanie Clarke-Penella, events coordinator for the city of Youngstown, also is a filmmaker who shoots various scenes around the city.

YOUNGSTOWN — For Melanie Clarke-Penella, a typical day finds her seamlessly blending the world of filmmaker by day and events coordinator for the city of Youngstown the rest of the time.

When filming in her element, Clarke-Penella throws on a pair of dirty Converse tennis shoes and jeans as she films around the city — a drastic change from her buttoned down look if you catch her at an event representing the city of Youngstown.

“I often liken the experience of organizing 12 distinct weddings for 12 brides, but on consecutive days,” Clarke-Penella said.

The analogy, she said, perfectly encapsulates the multifaceted nature of managing a movie set and organizing events for the city, which she said would be impossible to balance without her team and film partner, Cindy Castro DiRusso.

As a child growing up in Youngstown, Clarke-Penella has been surrounded by the arts thanks largely to her mother who raised her and her two siblings as a single mom.

“We barely had two dimes to rub together but if a Broadway show came through Stambaugh Auditorium, I went to that,” Clarke-Penella said. “Or if the symphony, the Uptown Theater, Easy Street Productions, if anything was happening, I was going.”

Her mother, who Clarke-Penella described as a “trailblazer” was a psychiatrist for children with behavioral disorders. She also worked at the Red Cross, meaning Clarke-Penella would often travel along with her to visit terminally ill AIDS patients.

Clarke-Penella’s upbringing gave her a deeper appreciation for the city of Youngstown and never let the title of the city as the “murder capital” limit where life in the city would take her.

“I never thought that that was the endgame for us. And I was never afraid of it because I always saw the potential of this area,” Clarke-Penella said.

Since then, the now 40-year-old Clarke-Penella has had a career that has kept the self-titled “master multitasker” dabbling in film, music and event coordination. She’s been an entertainment manager and producer in the music industry, working with Grammy-nominated, billboard-charting artists.

PREVIOUS CAREERS

Her career has seen her as a publicist for Lexicon Public Relations of New York City and Los Angeles and the vice president of Digital Launch, a New York marketing and management firm. Clarke-Penella also was once the associate director of admissions for the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, where she studied film animation.

After 15 years of living in New York City, where she held many titles — including as a production assistant for the large scale Fort Greene Festival — Clarke-Penella returned home to Youngstown during the pandemic.

A short time later, Clarke-Penella became the owner and executive producer of “Youngstown Pictures,” a local production company that already has filmed several features in the city. She also has produced three film shorts, also in the Youngstown area.

Clarke-Penella works alongside a crew mostly made up of women, a choice Clarke-Penella said doesn’t come at the slighting of men, but rather to highlight a group underrepresented in the industry.

“Ofcourse we value and appreciate our male colleagues as well, but it’s quite rare to see such a tight-knit group of women consistently working together in the independent film industry,” she said.

The crew just wrapped production on the studio’s fourth feature film, “Find Them,” with two more films coming soon to the streaming service Tubi.

Despite a career that has seen her on set of major Hollywood projects, the writer and director said she always brags the most about what her small indie team has been able to do locally.

One of them, a thriller titled “The Housekeeper” features names like Denise Richards, Richard Gunn and Illean Almaguer in a film about a young housekeeper who takes a job for a wealthy family with a dark secret that was filmed for two weeks.

“That movie brought about $500,000 worth of jobs and spending for two weeks,” Clarke-Penella said.

To staff the movie, she stayed local when putting together crew members and pulling in local vendors prioritizing some of the area’s local mom and pop businesses.

“A half a million dollar movie is not large scale, but it does make an economic impact in a small town when it’s done consistently,” Clarke-Penella said.

TAPPED FOR CITY JOB

In May 2022, Mayor Jamael Tito Brown hired Clarke-Penella for the role of downtown events and citywide special projects coordinator, a job that had been vacant since January 2020.

“I was impressed by what she’s done in New York and elsewhere,” Brown said previously. “She’s back home in the community. She’ll be a great asset to downtown. She’ll do well.”

Navigating the role of events coordinator, Clarke-Penella said the job requires a “combination of logistics,” to ensure the safety component of event planning is covered. That entails reporting to the mayor and ensuring that road workers, police, local businesses, stakeholders, fire department crews are always in sync with what’s going on in the city.

“For instance, the Italian festival wants to come downtown; then I work with them to do all the mapping and get all of their paperwork together and permits secured,” Clarke-Penella said.

From the perspective of both of her roles, Clarke-Penella said she can see the city of Youngstown heading toward a “renaissance” or a “resurgance” after decades of being down.

“I feel that’s been happening for quite some time. The energy has shifted and now physically it’s starting to match the energy when you see all of the development happening downtown,” she said.

To see more of what Youngstown Pictures is up to, check its website at Youngstownpictures.com.

To suggest a Saturday profile, contact Features Editor Burton Cole at bcole@tribtoday.com or Metro Editor Marly Reichert at mreichert@tribtoday.com.

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