Iguess you could say I shop for a living," says Laura Michalchyshyn.

From the outside, Michalchyshyn, who's in her mid-30s and now senior vice-president, dramatic programing for Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting Inc. (AABI), would seem to have the ultimate dream job ­ buying programs for all of AABI's channels, including "Showcase", "Showcase ROMANCE" and "Showcase ACTION".

It regularly takes her to film festivals in Cannes, Berlin and London where she hobnobs, drinks champagne, does deals and buys the edgy stuff that's come to exemplify Showcase's alternative oeuvre, whether it be foreign film, Queer culture ("Queer as Folk"), the Vancouver S&M scene ("Kink"), indepen-dent shorts or the hard-hitting behind-bars drama of "OZ".

But Michalchyshyn [Arts MBA'93], who is Winnipeg born and bred, is nothing if not humble about her achievements even though her resume clocks in at a hefty seven pages. It's a testament to the breadth and depth of her experience in the film world ­ from her meat-and-potatoes beginnings in 1989 working in the box office of her home city's West End Cultural Centre, to her present top-gun position in the Big Smoke.

Of course, there's always another side to the fairy tale. The hours for example ­ she regularly puts in 14 hour days and screens up to 30 films a week. However, like many CEOs and VPs she says her work is her lifestyle. She's devoted to it because she's remaking television in her own image. "We're not like CTV. We're a niche market. This is television without borders so we buy our programming from around the world. It's like comparing newspapers to magazines. I think we're a high-end on-air magazine, instead of a newspaper."

In her own independent media work she's produced two films "Hey, Happy!" which played in the Sundance festival in 2001 and "Guy Maddin:Waiting for Twilight", a one-hour biography on Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, which won best arts documentary at the 1998 Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto.

But she's never had any desire to be a filmmaker herself. "I always knew I was better at organizing things than being the creative force. I mean, I took piano lessons like everyone else, but I would have been much better at scheduling them."