National Federation of Croatian Americans Cultural Foundation (NFCA) recently announced its “40 Under 40″ winners from USA. In a new series on TCN, Steve Rukavina meets them, starting with the lovely Christina Cindrich on January 13, 2017.
What can one say about a television and entertainment professional who builds a brand and a career traveling the world and creating high impact video displays, footage and photos from exotic locations and especially at some of the most beautiful private islands in the world! How about “smart, passionate and savvy” to build that type of brand which has made Christina Cindrich, a well known expert within the global travel industry about how to promote luxury travel and to showcase some of the most beautiful islands and beaches in the world. The National Federation of Croatian Americans Cultural Foundation was real pleased to learn more about Christina’s travel entertainment production accomplishments throughout 2016 and she was chosen as one of the group’s first ever “40 Under 40” honorees.
This multi-talented Croatian-Italian American originally from Pittsburgh, now based in the Los Angeles area has traveled to forty countries as part of her travel entertainment production career and it’s taken her a long way away from her father’s Croatian family roots in Duga Resa, Croatia.
Christina’s career started young and before even first grade with ballet, tap, jazz, singing, piano and acting classes in Pittsburgh. Her charismatic personality, beauty with all her talents won her the Miss Pennsylvania Teen USA in 1999 and she competed in the Miss Teen USA pageant that year.
Shortly thereafter Christina moved out to Los Angeles to attend Loyola Marymount University and hired an agent to pursue work in television and commercials.
Christina has been fortunate over the years to land over 20 acting roles within feature films and television. She proudly says that being picked by Steven Spielberg for one scene in the movie Catch Me If You Can which was “so special to work with this iconic figure.” She has had multiple television appearances which included: Boston Legal, Desperate Housewives, Frasier, Las Vegas and CSI and spots within a few feature movies.
However, even after making big strides in the Los Angeles entertainment industry, she sacrificed the Hollywood scene to move to Boone, North Carolina to become a news anchor. There she produced, hosted and wrote her own content as the only news anchor in a twelve county area. She told me this job “allowed her to truly hone and develop her TV production skills.” This pivotal broadcasting job over five years turned out to be ideal training and the right transition back to the West Coast and to build a new career within the global travel industry entertainment arena.
Shortly after her return to California, Christina was hired by the AWE cable network based in San Diego, to take a one island travel episode and turn it into multi-show series called “ Private Islands.” It was a big success and she took the show to the number one ranking within the 25 million viewers on the AWE network. Christina accumulated seven Emmy nominations and two Emmy awards, one for “Private Islands: Fiji, an Exotic Escape” (2014) and the second one for the “The Magic of the Venice Carnivale” (2015).
This cable TV series that led to all those nominations brought Christina two well-deserved Emmy awards. She told me that “it’s such a honor to be recognized by your industry colleagues and it was a lifelong dream of mine to win one.” In one Emmy acceptance speech she said “you sacrifice today for a better tomorrow” and her career development has clearly demonstrated that wise adage by her achievements.
Christina has creatively built a brand upon the success of her award-winning series about “Private Islands.” Her growing legion of fans truly appreciate her upbeat and engaging broadcasting skills. Her innovative use of “drones” and nuanced techniques to get incredible underwater photos is truly an art form. She has found ways to turn a journey and her exotic locations into scenes so breathtaking beautiful and beyond a perfect postcard. Her “You Tube” video about the underwater fun around the Cayman Islands is so impactful and one can truly see Christina’s artistic talents in action. This camera star is not afraid to swim with the sharks or dance underwater with the stingrays.
She is proud to say that her development of social media followers gives her such satisfaction and is very notable with over 90,000 followers on Instagram and her total social media is over 140,000 followers with Facebook and Twitter added. These incredibly impressive numbers give her luxury travel brand proposals more leverage, influence and respect with any potential clients. It’s very impressive to hear how she’s further packaging and building her travel production skills and exotic travel projects into a truly unique brand seriously enhanced by the use of social media.
Enjoy looking at her very impressive Christina Cindrich “highlights host reel” and here’s that link!
Christina when asked if she could name a few of her favorite islands and exotic locations she mentioned the El Nido Islands, in the Philippines and the island country of Palau, located in the western Pacific Ocean. The Republic of Palau contains approximately 250 islands and our fellow Croatian American highly recommends a visit there if one is up for a luxury trip to an independent country that loves Americans and interestingly, this island country gained full sovereignty in 1994 and has a “Compact of Free Association with the United States.”
She has a bucket list of many new travel projects and is excited about doing something in Croatia. She is amazed about the beauty of the Adriatic Coast and all those beautiful islands and is energized about a second visit to Croatia. She was proud to share that she has two “Travel Network” episodes to be aired soon in 2017 about a few top secret beaches in Northern California and Oregon.
This consummate professional is quick to point out that her Croatian American father Ralph Cindrich, a hugely successful sports agent and former NFL professional football player truly taught her a hard work ethic by his example and success. She proudly mentions that she learned from her father too not to take any “no” as a final answer to any priority question. Christina also cites her mother as always believing in her and always being her number one fan and biggest supporter and thus, having such a huge influence on her life and career. She gratefully says, that she is so “very blessed to have such supportive parents and could not have accomplished what she has done career-wise without all their encouragement.”
Christina is a fearless adrenaline seeker, global traveler and an incredibly creative producer and a world class host of travel entertainment. It’s so apparent in talking with Christina this week that her commitment to further developing specialty luxury travel projects all over the world is a true passion and she has a long wish list of locations on her radar screen. As a serious world traveler myself, it will be exciting to follow Christina’s travels as I do already on Twitter and let’s hope she embraces a Croatian Adriatic Coast island assignment in the near future.
