Today we’d like to introduce you to Lillian Connell.
Hi Lillian, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I was born and raised in Vero Beach, Florida, a small, sleepy beach town, but I was born with a dream for so much more. I was always a people person over a books person, and from a young age I fell hard for singing and acting. I performed all through school, and being on stage made me feel more alive than anything else.
When college came, I chose business. It was a hard shift, but my curiosity for creativity never left. I thought I might channel it into fashion and spent a summer interning at a showroom in Milan. It was one of the best experiences of my life, and it taught me one important thing: I never wanted to be behind the camera. Dressing the models who came through, I realized that performing for a camera was a lot like performing for an audience, the thing I had loved as a kid. It still never occurred to me that I could be a model myself.
After graduating, I moved to Austin for a job in technology sales. Life was full, but something felt missing, and I knew it was creativity. Then, on a New Year’s trip to New York, a photographer stopped me at breakfast and asked to do a test shoot because he liked my freckles. I did my background check, took a leap of faith, and stepped in front of the camera for the first time. That one shoot changed everything. It connected me with agents across the country and landed me with an agency in Austin. I was learning the industry and how to model at the same time, and I was curious enough to say yes to everything. I booked brands from Cadillac to Reebok, traveled all over the US, and built real relationships with the photographers and teams I met along the way.
After three years, I took another leap and moved to New York. I still love Austin, but something here was calling me. My career has grown even more since. I am now signed with four agencies across the US, travel internationally for shoots, and coach others who want to break in. Modeling gives me the same fulfillment I felt as a kid in musical theater. I am 27 now, and while I still work full-time in tech sales, my heart is entirely in modeling and in building it into a lasting career. I do not know everything, but I know that chasing that feeling is one of the most important things you can do, and for that I am grateful.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No, of course not. I will say up front that having tech sales as my full-time job took the financial pressure off and let me see modeling purely as a passion and an addition to my life. I did not walk in expecting it to grow the way it has. It takes a lot of independent drive to reach out to new photographers, build a network from scratch, and invest in yourself early on, all while leaving plenty of room for rejection.
That last part is the real challenge. I book about two to three projects a month, but I get 20 to 25 castings in that same month, which means most of them end in a no. Filming for castings takes a huge amount of time, and you put real effort into each one before you ever hear back. It takes endless consistency and resilience. There are so many different ways to enter the industry that you have to stay sharp, take smart chances, and know your own boundaries. One thing I always tell people is that you never have to do anything that makes you even slightly uncomfortable.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My full-time job is in tech sales at IBM, where I manage our existing relationships for our automation products with some of the largest technology companies in the world. Those accounts are mostly based in San Francisco, so I fly out about twice a month for work, then extend the trip down to LA for modeling.
On the modeling side, I specialize in lifestyle work. At 5’5″ I am not a runway model, though I have had a few runway opportunities in New York. I actually prefer lifestyle because it lets me wear so many different hats. I have shot for athleisure, automotive, jewelry, swimwear, sunglasses, eyewear, e-commerce, household products, and drink brands. In lifestyle the possibilities are endless. If I had to narrow it down, my main lanes are jewelry, beauty, and athleisure.
My proudest moment was booking a campaign for an alcohol brand that filmed in Madeira, Portugal. Traveling abroad for a shoot was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I got to see a new part of the world, meet new people, and come together with a team to bring a creative vision to life. I made genuine, lifelong friends on that trip who I still talk to today.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I absolutely love New York. Moving here was my dream ever since I was a little girl, and it has truly lived up to it. That said, as I hit my three-year mark, I am not sure city life is for me forever, and I honestly thought it would be. That is part of growing up, I have come to find. We live out the dreams we had when we were younger, and then we get to make new ones.
My pace right now is extremely busy and I would not have it any other way, but the older I get, the more I appreciate the slow moments in whatever environment I am in. The beauty of New York is the endless opportunity at your doorstep, and I plan to take full advantage of it while I am here. Down the road, I do look forward to settling somewhere a little slower, maybe a sleepy beach town like the one I grew up in. I will just bring my creative spunk with me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://lilliandayconnell.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lilliandayconnell/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lillian-connell/
- Other: https://lilliandayconnell.com/
