Just The Facts: Age - 27; Hometown - Johannesburg; Education - Spelman University, Spanish major; Employ - with Publicis New York since 2003, promoted to producer in June 2006. As of April 2007, she will be working as a producer at Saatchi & Saatchi, New York.

Previous Experience: How different things might have been: Vilakazi originally studied Spanish as her major with pre-med requirements, with her sights set on psychiatry. She decided on a career behind the screen after a stint working as a PA on a soap opera at her uncle's production company in Johannesburg. Moving to New York shortly afterwards, she joined agency D'Arcy, going to Publicis in 2003 and working her way up to producer last summer. Her first spot was the charged MTV Choose or Lose campaign.

Best Work: Still a relative newcomer, the work she's produced displays a maturity and breadth of experience beyond her years. Be it the complexities of shooting in Singapore and mediating between director and post house for Siemens, or getting the most from a small budget and sensitively negotiating the politics of a gay marriage job for MTV, she's admirably rewarded the trust placed on her young shoulders by her former heads of production Colin Pearsall and Sally Ann Dale: "They always believed that I could tackle the work and told me that I was ready. Colin and Sally thought that the best way they learned was to just start producing. Obviously we (my fellow associate producers and I) had the right foundations, but when the time came, Colin just pushed me out of the nest and told me to get to work."

What makes a good producer: "Being a resourceful diplomat," shoots back Vilakazi. Throw in tact, unflappability and a boundless enthusiasm for making the most of every script's potential. Belief in what you're doing is vital too. "A lot of work is better and has more potential than people think," she says, citing her latest job for Fibresure. "You can make jokes about it, but if you start off thinking that your work doesn't have a chance and there's no potential in it, then you're going to end up with a piece of crap. If you believe in something and sell it so you can get a great director, a good editor and music house, [you can] surprise people because you make more out of it than people thought was there in the first place."

Most hair-raising moment as a producer: "One of the tech scouts for Siemens, a member of our team, accidentally dropped a 150-pound window out of the seventh floor of a skyscraper. Talk about your heart dropping into your stomach. I was sure that someone was dead on the ground and that my director was going to be arrested, caned and deported (or worse). Luckily most of the window was caught by a ledge two stories down and no one below (at the conveniently located sidewalk cafe, for instance) was seriously injured. Needless to say, we weren't allowed to shoot in that building."

Best part of the job?: "I love having to work with absolutely everyone. Production companies, composers, animators, writers, messengers, even account people. We have to deal with them all, it's never boring. I love to travel, too. That's a major perk. Ending relationships is easier when you can just say, 'I'll be out of the country for a couple of weeks. Please don't call me'. (Kidding!)"

Best advice she's heard : "When you fuck up, don't panic because you won't be defined by what happens to you, but by how you deal with what happens to you," she says sagely. "Oh, and never drink cheap tequila."

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