EDITOR’S NOTE: Tansu Philip (BFA/Television and Broadcast Journalism ’16) has been doing a series of posts over on Buzzfeed profiling some of our talented students, and she was kind enough to share them with us. She will be profiling someone from each of Dodge College’s majors before the year is over, so keep an eye out for her posts.

I never really understood what it meant when someone was described as “easy to talk to.” As a child who was a little too blessed with the gift of gab, I thought everyone and everything was easy to talk to. A teacher? No problem. Three year old kid? Fine. Brick wall? Done. (Hey, I was a Speech and Debate kid in high school. It was normal.)


After a series of horrible social encounters within the past year, however, I’ve realized that there are certain people who make conversation devastatingly tough.

Delaney Delponti is not one of those people.

The Basics
Name: Delaney Delponti
Age: 20 years old
Birthplace: Palos Verdes, CA
Major: Television and Broadcast Journalism, Narrative emphasis
Past: Industry kid, followed her Script Supervisor mom from set to set until she developed a dream of becoming a director. All that changed, however, when she came to Chapman and decided directing was not her thing
Mentor: Aly Moore, her boss

Although she apologized multiple times for “being awkward,” spending 45 minutes with this girl I’ve only talked to a few times prior was a complete breath of fresh air. And that cannot be said for a lot of people.

spylight logo

We met to discuss her newest adventure in the form of Spylight, an interactive app and website in which you can find exact matches or inspired looks from some of your favorite TV show characters. Be it Scandal or Game of Thrones (God knows we all want to wear armor to our next sorority formal), Spylight has an entire team of fashion consultants and industry experts who work with actual costume designers on set to find perfect matches in clothes, shoes, and accessories. It is, in a word, amazing. And that’s coming from someone who conducted this interview wearing sweatpants.

Delponti, on the other hand, looked like a model. Sporting a #fancy hat and flawless makeup, it was easy to believe her when she told me she was sought after for her trusted advice as a fashion consultant for Spylight.


The company first began in December 2013, the brainchild of three Yale students. After an involved Chapman student posted a Facebook status ambiguously asking for a “motivated student passionate about both TV and fashion”, Delponti took the blind plunge and has been working for them ever since.

“You have to be willing to do anything and everything – you’ll never know what could change your life” she said, acknowledging the fact that her journey with Spylight has altered her future for the better.

delaney delponti photo

Following hospitalization after undergoing an awful experience last year, Delponti turned to Spylight as a way to kill time. “I completely immersed myself, watching hours and hours of TV a day as a fashion consultant and then matching up what I saw on the screen with fashion closets of every designer, every clothing boutique, everything.”

When she wasn’t working on Spylight, she kept up another favorite hobby: photography. “It’s my creative outlet; I love shooting portraits and being able to transform people into someone they never thought they could be. My photos can get a bit weird so it’s nice to work with people who share my vision and are willing to jump in the ocean at 4 in the morning for the shot.” As weird as the photos may get, they aren’t too weird for the LACDA in LA or Nurtureart in New York, two galleries her photos have been featured in. Photography is a hobby of hers that’s clearly here to stay, as she’s done some photos for Spylight, too. Because this girl just loves taking “living your job” to the next (beautiful) level.

delaney delponti photo


Speaking of Spylight: this “shazam for fashion” is sure to change the way people watch TV in the future if Delponti has anything to say about it. They already have 11,000 downloads – even though they only launched in January – and celebrities retweeting them all the time. Crowd favorite Zooey Deschanel’s website, Hello Giggles, even wrote an entire article about the up and coming company.

The best part of all this is that Delponti is no sell out. Most of her Television major counterparts go for internships and jobs with bigger names and networks, where room for growth is limited, and equality in the workplace is still a questionable issue. But Spylight is a start-up company that’s mostly women – two things usually foreign in our industry. Plus, half the staff consists of Chapman kids, which is always a plus in my book. Delponti has risen to the top so quickly at Spylight that she’s currently managing quite a few people older than her. “I stopped telling people I was in school just so they wouldn’t treat me differently. Although it was strange at first, I’ve learned how to manage people effectively.” If anyone is going to step up and take charge with great force, it’s Delponti. It’s nice to have this trailblazer setting the path and proving that you can step outside of your comfort zone and still be successful.


And that’s a belief that will never go out of style.

Tansu Philip is a Junior Political Science and Television and Broadcast Journalism double major at Chapman University. She’s a proud panther and loves getting to know her fellow classmates when she isn’t working on her food blog, Tasting with Tansu. She is not a fan of USC in any way, shape or form.