At 17 years old, as many of her peers were packing for college, Shaina Danziger was packing for Europe. For the next 11 years, she traveled the world as a high-fashion model, working with major brands and publications and living a life that, from the outside, seemed enviable.
“I knew I was lucky, but I always felt like something was missing,” she said.
Behind the glamour was an industry that left little room for self-determination. Modeling agencies dictated everything from her appearance and finances to how she presented herself to the world. Having entered the industry as a teenager, she grew into adulthood according to someone else’s idea. “I was reworked into their vision of what I should be, and in the midst of my success I felt empty,” recalled Danziger.
A family emergency brought her back home to New York in 2013. She retired from the runway and began caring for her ailing father. When he died two years later, she found herself without the career and family stability that had long defined her. “At 29, I was forced to figure out who I actually was for the first time in my life.”
She found an answer, unexpectedly, in a more role that took her behind the scenes. After cold-calling more than 100 assistant directors and unit production managers, she landed her first production job. “I had gone from the one being catered to on set to juggling a six coffees for crew members and holding up traffic on an overnight shoot in Jamaica, Queens,” she said. “I had never felt more alive.”
Over the next decade, Danziger rose from production assistant to working with director Mimi Leder, and later joined The Jim Gaffigan Show as a writers’ assistant and then assistant showrunner, and became a creative producer with Gaffigan’s production company Chimichanga.
Her new career also gave her distance to reconsider her old one. Questions about the treatment of models, coupled with her own experiences, prompted a cold email to Sally Singer of American “Vogue.” That conversation helped lead to “The Models,” a 2019 docuseries with Danziger at the helm, which examined the harsh realities of the modeling industry. Interviews with dozens of models confirmed that many situations Danziger once considered to be isolated were actually systemic. “We had all endured significant trauma at the hands of the very people who were hired to protect us—our agents,” she said.
That project eventually connected her with the Model Alliance, a nonprofit founded by alumna Sara Ziff ‘11GS, that advocates for labor rights in the fashion industry. Danziger became involved in public policy and efforts supporting legislation including New York’s Adult Survivors Act and Fashion Workers Act. “Through my work with Model Alliance, I finally felt fulfilled,” she said. “The emptiness I felt as a young teenage model had been filled with a desire to help improve the lives of others in this country and across the globe through public policy, and that revelation is what has led me to pursue a degree in global affairs and political science at GS.”
Danziger’s path—from fashion to filmmaking, advocacy and now Columbia—has taught her to embrace uncertainty rather than fear it. And sometimes, she believes, growth means recognizing when a path no longer serves you and having the courage to pivot.
“Go after what you want in life and don't let fear dictate your next move. I'd rather have an inbox full of noes than a mind full of regret,” she said. “You're never too old to go back to school or pursue your dreams.”
