Kathy Schlender

I'm a Freelance Creative Producer with 15+ years of experience across commercial, fashion, pharma and industrial production.

Give me an idea and I'll tell you what it needs. Give me a production and I'll run it — preferably both. When complexity hits, even better.

I own budgets and timelines, connect disciplines, and work inside the creative process — shaping visual direction through casting, curation and atmosphere.

Multi-city, cross-border productions. Parallel photo and film units. Crews of 20+ across EU and non-EU countries, budgets above €500K — end to end.

I translate creative ideas into feasible execution, across still and motion, on-site or remote.

National and international photo productions across fashion, lifestyle, interieur and food, in studio and on-location, with international production stays of 2+ months. Led casting, location scouting and art buying directly across productions.

Established and operated a 1,500 m² in-house production studio, built from scratch, including infrastructure, equipment and full setup. Developed production workflows, systems and standards across departments.

Department leadership · Forecasting and resource planning · Budget ownership · Workflows & standards · International productions · Crew composition · Casting, artist sourcing & scouting · On-set co-direction

Formally trained photographer, IHK-certified. Portrait and corporate photography across studios in North Rhine-Westphalia. The visual grounding for how I cast, scout and produce today.