(Associate Producer) makes her Disney debut with "Hercules" and brings to the project a diverse background in advertising, marketing and animation production management.
Born in Newport Beach, California and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Haaland attended the University of Minnesota and went on to receive a masters degree in international management from Thunderbird University (the American Graduate School of International Management in Phoenix). In 1984, she moved to New York to launch her professional career with McCann-Erickson Advertising, where she started as an assistant account executive and eventually handled such major clients as Lufthansa Airlines and Mennen. Among the highlights of her four years with McCann, she spent a year in Sweden, where she participated in the agency's first junior executive program. In 1989, Haaland returned home to Minneapolis to take a job with Saatchi & Saatchi as an account executive on the Northwest Airlines account.
While visiting her brother, an animator, in California in 1990, Haaland met director Bill Kroyer, who was involved at that time in making the animated feature, "FernGully...The Last Rainforest." Shortly after that encounter, she was offered a job as the film's operation manager and she accepted. Relocating to Los Angeles, she spent the next 1-1/2 years coordinating the complicated logistics of making the film in several different countries. Following her assignment with Kroyer Films, she went to work for Iwerks Entertainment as a marketing director and spent the next 18 months working on "Virtual Adventures" and "Cinetropolis," a location-based entertainment complex which debuted in Connecticut.
In 1995, she joined the Disney Feature Animation team and was immediately assigned to the "Hercules" unit.
