This Is Work?

Keli Wallace, 29, Arlington

Director of special projects, American Gaming Association

David Copperfield once changed clothes in her hotel room in Las Vegas. World champion poker player Chris "Jesus" Ferguson taught her how to play Texas Hold 'Em. She has shaken hands with Steve Wynn, Clint Eastwood, Larry King and the cast of "Gilligan's Island."

Keli Wallace moved to the District six years ago from Vanderbilt University, but going east really brought her closer to the West. She snagged her first post-college job as an executive assistant at the American Gaming Association, a 12-person operation at 13th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW that represents the casino entertainment industry. She has stuck with them since and worked her way up, even though she never imagined she'd grow professionally in a trade-and-lobby group tangentially devoted to showgirls, Elvis impersonators and Wayne Newton.

The job has serious perks, and close encounters with celebrity are among them. The others are what you'd expect: delectable business dinners, instant admission to hot clubs, swanky rooms at almost every hotel on the Strip.

"It can get a little hectic and dicey trying to balance the fun and the work we need to accomplish," says Wallace, who is from Oklahoma City. "We work and play in equal parts. I'm the girl that goes looking for the minimum-bet tables, because I like to sit and play for a while, but I don't want to lose everything."

She recently completed a trip to Macau in Asia for a giant gaming convention, and she pops over to Vegas three or four times a year, but that doesn't mean every jaunt is a holiday. It takes sweat and grace to help steer the Global Gaming Expo, a massive yearly convention for 30,000 exhibitors and enthusiasts in Vegas, as well as the annual conference of the National Center for Responsible Gaming.

A job's a job. Sometimes it's impossible to make it to the blackjack tables (even though she's on the gaming floor) or the sports book to bet on college football. (She's a huge University of Oklahoma fan.) And only when you work in Vegas do you need to schedule in the 15 or 20 minutes it may take to get from your hotel room to the front door of a giant casino complex.

Save for the stash of Vegas-played cards in a storage room, the American Gaming Association office, attached to the Warner Theatre, is all business. The walls and carpet are light beige, the cubicles and offices neatly appointed and without a trace of garishness. Secret roulette tables, alas, do not fold out from the walls.

"We've said so many times we need to get some felts in here because people expect it when they come to visit," Wallace says. "Our office is just like any other consultants' office in town. We don't have slot machines in a backroom. We don't wear visors."

Anissa Whitten, 35, Arlington

Vice president of international affairs and trade policy, Motion Picture Association of America

She doesn't walk the red carpets, but she works with and for the people who do. Anissa Whitten has hobnobbed with De Niro and Scorsese -- and was duly star-struck when Matt Damon showed up at the I Street NW offices for a screening. But her focus is less on schmoozing and more on protecting intellectual property and reducing trade barriers.

"People think 'movie industry' and just think about things on 'Entertainment Tonight' and 'Access Hollywood,' " says Whitten, a native of Maryland's Eastern Shore, reached by phone at a conference in Slovenia. "They think about big stars, the Academy Awards, dresses and limos, but the thing is the movie industry is so much more. I've gotten a much better appreciation of that."

This appreciation came from jetting to Los Angeles to talk with directors, animators and computer guys about issues important to them, such as finding new ways to use emerging technologies to deliver movies and cracking down on illicit recording at theaters.

"If I'm going to try to advocate for them and represent their interests, I need to understand what their challenges are and how business models are evolving," Whitten says. "Just trying to pick their brains: Where do they want to go, what hasn't worked for them."

With a master's degree in international relations and a previous gig in the State Department, Whitten relishes the global scope of her job, which extends far beyond Hollywood and New York. No day is the same when she's in Washington, but Whitten often finds herself on the phone with Sao Paulo, Brussels, Mexico City or elsewhere. She works with smaller local film industries and gets to know foreign countries through the medium of film.

Whitten's extracurricular interests are a parade of normalcy (hiking, camping, yoga, music, family, friends and her dog), but as part of work she has found herself playing with cutting-edge film technology, using backstage passes at "The Colbert Report" and cage-diving with great white sharks in South Africa. It's a tango between policy and celebrity, a kind of pseudo-fantasy life epitomized by her favorite movie: "The Princess Bride."