Vanessa Elese won a Daytime Emmy in 2010 for Outstanding Achievement in Makeup in a drama series for her work on All My Children.
Vanessa Elese ’01 knew she wanted five things from her career when she set out for an internship with TV’s All My Children after college: Creativity and profitability. The chance to give back. To love her work. And to have fun while doing it.
As a freelance makeup artist in New York, “all those things added up for me,” said Elese, who in college used the last name Muhlenfeld. If recognition had been on her list, she would have scored that, too. She won a Daytime Emmy in 2010 for Outstanding Achievement in Makeup in a drama series for her work on All My Children.
Elese grew up in Arizona. She wanted an East Coast experience after high school, and came to Mary Washington. “I loved the sense of community that was there,” she said.
She also got the support and encouragement to do whatever she set her mind to. That included executive directing and starring in a soap opera pilot for her senior thesis. Elese assembled a cast and crew and traveled to New York for filming over a three-day weekend. She finished the shooting in Virginia, edited it in Chicago with the help of a friend, and screened it at Dodd Auditorium.
“ Thinking back on it, it was so crazy.” Of her professor she said, “Gregg [Stull] could have put the whole kibosh on my 
senior project. He left me to do what I needed to do.
“He created a team of people who invested in students like they were their own children.”
While interning with All My Children, Elese worked at a talent agency and explored acting. She also kept up with makeup. “The makeup side really took off.”
She worked as a makeup artist for Saturday Night Live and for the TV series Damages starring Glenn Close.
Elese recently was co-host and executive producer for a makeover pilot. “These things are a dime a dozen,” she said, “but it was a positive experience.”
She’s looking for a home for the still-untitled makeover show. Meanwhile, she keeps busy with clients, who include designers, entertainers, and celebrities. So that leaves only “giving back” from her must-have list made more than a decade ago. She contributes time to the “3 Angels Fund,” a nonprofit created by actress NiCole Robinson and her husband, Craig Snyder, who lost an infant son to a rare genetic lung disease.