Erik Sords

Erik Sords was born and raised in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland Ohio, where he and his twin brother attended an all male prep school from 2-12. Erik played ice hockey from age 3, including regional travel with a AAA team, 4 years high school Varsity, and 1 year College hockey with the Syracuse A team. Erik was also a 3 year Lacrosse player, specializing in faceoffs (FOGO), and, with his team, won the State Championship in 2008. In addition to his academics and sports, Erik was involved in every fall play and spring musical from 8th grade through graduation, and won first place in the Cleveland Improv Olympics in 2008. Erik auditioned and entered Syracuse University's Visual and Performing Arts Program, where he studied drama, stage combat and joined the DKE fraternity. But after only three semesters, Erik felt he wasn't being pushed enough, and wanted more hands-on experience. He took himself to Los Angeles where, for one year, he auditioned for the many student film projects being made by budding directors. After making 15 short films, most of which he played the lead, Erik began noticing the amount of interest the Chinese were taking in the film industry, and wanted to be part of it. He returned to Cleveland to get a Visa, and look for a job that would get him to China, intent on learning the language and the culture. Within a month Erik had secured a job, a visa, and was headed to Hangzhao to work as a teacher with young children. Knowing he wouldn't pick up Chinese quickly if he lived with other Americans, he negotiated a dorm room at Zhejiang University so that, on his off hours, he would more quickly learn Mandarin through immersion. Erik quickly began to pick up the ability to get around with simple Mandarin, returning to Los Angeles after a year, where he then did miscellaneous production work on a variety of projects. But, in 2012, when a Chinese director invited Erik to be an assistant producer on the set of Signal Of The Sisters in Hunan, China, Erik became frustrated when he realized his basic Mandarin wasn't enough; he couldn't read the scripts. At that point Erik decided to get serious about his Mandarin, applied and enrolled in Beijing Language and Culture University, and taught English to locals to support himself and pay for school. After a semester of 8 hour days learning to read and write Mandarin, Erik returned to Cleveland to convince Cleveland State to allow him to use his Mandarin Studies from Beijing, jointly, towards his final degree, and they approved. While in Cleveland, Erik then entered a Chinese Proficiency Competition, put on by the Confucius Institute at Pace University, and won first place in the Cleveland competition. He was then flown to New York for the final competition, where he was required to give a speech and perform a talent. The talent part was a surprise, and he didn't know what to do. So, on the plane, Erik wrote a script for a short comedy skit, which he then performed, alone and in Mandarin, for his Chinese audience. Though he only won an honorary prize, the Confucius Institute was impressed enough to offer to fund Erik's next entire year at the Beijing Language and Culture University. By June of 2015, Erik passed his 5 HSK level of fluency in Mandarin and returned to Cleveland to finish up the remaining few credits he needed to complete his degree. Erik was immediately hired by Tesla Motors and, enjoying the competition of his position, became their number one product specialist in the USA by the end of his second month. However, this was a detour for Erik, and he knew that after all of his time and effort in both the film industry and his Mandarin studies, working in the car industry wasn't what he really wanted. So after only a few months, Erik resigned from Tesla, and returned to Beijing.