For Cheyenne Mountain-area professional Kristen Olson, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted changes in her career goals. She began shifting from providing marketing and public relations to doing more creative work that had to to with her passion — film.

“In terms of trends within my work, those were accelerated [during the pandemic.] There’s not a lot of marketing dollars right now, and I’m more interested in film,” Olson said.

When Colorado locked down last March, Olson had just returned from a four-day screenwriting class in Los Angeles. The class, a part of the University of California Los Angeles extension program, was an example of how Olson has followed opportunity in the last few years.

“One of my guiding principles is to follow opportunity. I had always been interested in screenwriting, and I finally found a course through UCLA,” she said.

After Olson returned to Colorado Springs, she took two additional screenwriting classes through UCLA online and began writing two screenplays, one with a classmate from UCLA and another on her own.

“I viewed the early lockdown as an opportunity to dive deeper into my personal writing projects. I spent the first three months waking up at 5 a.m. and writing until noon every day,” Olson said. “It overcame me. It was just something I needed to do.”

Her interest in filmmaking was sparked when Olson was working as the director of events and minister of community for Colorado Springs-based Bristol Brewery from 2013 to 2016. During that time, she worked with crews filming the National Geographic television show “Brain Games.”

“That was rewarding to me and that was just fueling the fire of film inside of me,” Olson said. “I had a lot of opportunities to try out different things at Bristol.”

She made a variety of connections at Bristol Brewery, including meeting the owner of Traverse Image, a Denver-based outdoor-inspired film production company, where she is currently a freelance producer.

Olson started a marketing and public relations firm in 2016 when she left Bristol. She serviced primarily food and beverage businesses with her business, and she began shifting her focus to film and creative work, especially this year.

In 2020, Olson produced a short film for Traverse Image about a wounded military veteran who heals his mental health in the Pikes Peak wilderness. She’s also the producer for two feature-length documentaries that are currently in production.

In late March, Olson’s screenwriting partner introduced her to the Groundlings School, an improv training school located in Los Angeles that offered online classes for the first time during the pandemic.

For Olson, improv proved to be a silver lining of the pandemic.

“It opened a door,” she said. “I started taking classes with them, and, then I discovered improv, and it’s become a major passion of mine. It’s incredibly rewarding and fun.”

But, at the beginning, it was terrifying for her.

“I had to jump off the cliff,” Olson said. “Be bold and take chances and do things that scare you. Your hands might shake and your voice might tremble, but you have to do it. It’s the only way to grow and discover new parts of yourself and potentially find new rewards.”

Improv not only taught Olson about herself but it changed her perspective in life.

“I’ve learned so much about myself,” she said. “One of the rules in improv is don’t deny the truth of what another person has said. How can I say yes? How can I show up?”

Improv’s principle of going with the flow continues to show up in Olson’s life.

“I had to reinvent myself since I moved back to the Springs,” she said. “I’ve been saying ‘Yes, and’ the whole time, and I didn’t know it. Follow opportunity and eventually it will intersect with passion.”

Improv training gave Olson new ways to deal with the uncertainty of a pandemic and life in general.

“In times of stress it’s so easy to get serious and negative,” Olson said. “Improv has given me tools to look at different possibilities. How can I change the script? How can I make light of this particular situation or disagreement? I’m not perfect by any means, but improv is helping.”

At the Groundlings School, she also took voiceover classes, where Olson learned to change her voice as a way to act. This led to her landing her first paying voiceover job on a Hulu commercial.

Olson hopes to continue her career in improv, voiceover, acting and filmmaking.

“Who knows what will happen. I’m hoping for the best. I’m interested in acting, and I never thought I would be. It’s always a balance with financial security and following a new path. It’s not easy,” she said. “I just feel like the rest of my life I want to do creative work.”

Kristen Olson can be reached on Instagram at @kristenolsonfilm.