What do you do when you’re faced with choosing a career at the end of your final school year? Well as someone who was pretty academic, it was simple - pick the hardest degree to get into and challenge myself to get into it. That happened to be medicine. But the thing was, I never imagined being a doctor, medic, surgeon or whatever else a med degree gets you. Although my grades were good, I wasn’t with my tribe and hated everything about it - except the time I got banned from biology fooling around with a cadaver… But that’s a story for another day. So I pulled out of medicine feeling like a failure, with no plan. Shit. Thanks to a family friend who recommended a Visual Communication degree, apparently I might be OK at that? My failure to finish medicine put me on the creative path I am now and I absolutely love it.

I’m equal parts creative and academic, which makes me a strategic creative. Having worked with Mary Portas at her agency/consultancy for 10 years - initially as a mid art director and eventually the global creative director, I learnt how to harness these two sides of my brain to be a powerful leader. Mary fostered a spirited, straight talking and charismatic leadership style within me. She taught me how to look strategically outwards at cultural & societal waves for inspiration, rather than inward at brand competitors or our immediate industry. These superpowers give me the ability to take people and brands on a journey. I see where the world is moving, I tune brands into how people are living, thinking, feeling & shopping and I can naturally bring a team into that vision. I lead with energy, empathy and kindness, yet I won’t suffer mediocrity.

Because of Mary, I’m confident working alongside big personalities and public figures who come with founder led businesses. Over the last 18 months, I’ve been leading fashion agency ODD through a merger with advertising behemoth Engine, now merged as House337. I understand stakeholder management, working closely with the agency C-suite through to the global CEO of its holding company. I’m not afraid to challenge convention and have a progressive mindset, which put me on the Executive Leadership Team of House337 setting the company and creative vision. After 1 year merged, we were shortlisted for Creative Agency Of The Year at the Creative Circle Awards ’23. My creative + strategic brainpower landed me the role of building a culture of creative effectiveness at House337, all while ECD’ing 2 of the agencies 3 biggest clients.

So here’s to flunking med school. Worked out OK in the end.

High performance runs in my blood. My Dad is an Olympic gold medalist and I competed at a high level in sport at school back in NZ. From a teenager, I’ve been performance coached to effectively set goals, stay focussed on the important stuff and achieve them. My attitude towards almost everything in life is win or learn.

But wind back a few years in my career and that high performance mindset turned into obsession. I became so dedicated to winning at work (whatever that means), I lost who I was and associated myself first and foremost with my job. I was flying around the world shooting fashion campaigns with A-listers (Gwen Stefani and Miss Piggy defo highlights), was a Creative Director at a relatively young age, led two creative departments across Melbourne & London, was named in Creative Equals x Campaign’s ‘Future Leaders List’ and topped Campaign’s new biz agency leaderboard with a 100% pitch-win rate two years straight at Portas. It all sounds great. And it was, until it wasn’t. I was working 24/7 and burnt out. I quit Portas and thought I needed to leave the industry, it had sucked the life out of me. But time is a great healer and after 3 months of intrepid travel, qualifying as a Rescue Scuba Diver, many hours of self-reflection and drinking more mojito’s than any person should in their lifetime, I returned to London mentally stronger and focussed on what matters.

My biggest learning from burn out was understanding the importance of boundaries and balance. Having the confidence to say NO (and encouraging others to do the same), knowing the necessity of looking after my body and brain to perform at my best (I’ve since become obsessed with hormone hacking!), and that a creative culture which prioritises wellbeing starts at the top - with people like me. Now I’m 100% dedicated to the wellness of me and my team and having lived through it, I know the actions to take when I see someone slipping. A creative will never burnout on my watch. Regardless of how some of our industry may treat their people, I believe we owe it to our crew to protect them from that crap.

I admire those people who sit down on a Sunday morning with the FT or some awarded piece of literature, but I’m not that person, I get distracted after reading the first sentence. In fact, I’m unashamedly fascinated by populist media - reality tv and TikTok are basically an anthropological study! We can learn so much about humans just from an episode of Below Deck... However growing up in NZ, celeb culture and reality TV weren’t really a thing, so landing in the UK in 2011 I was gobsmacked how the populist media were allowed to behave. Fuelling unobtainable beauty standards, demoralising women for their weight, ageist, sexist, racist, outright bitchy. The more I looked, the more I saw fashion & beauty brands also behaving in a damaging way. Idolising youth, thin, fair skinned, middle class. As a woman who yoyo’s between a size 10-18, this infuriated me and I made it my mission to use the power of creativity and the influence of the brand’s I work with to help change the narrative. I instinctively knew empathetic, optimistic and radically inclusive creativity would land far better with audiences than a thin white supermodel on a billboard. I love taboo-smashing, empathetic creative that reaches audiences at scale and grows businesses. More recently, this mission to change the narrative has broadened out from the wellbeing of people, to the wellbeing of our planet too. Being an outdoors loving kiwi who particularly adores the ocean, this comes as no surprise.

I’m ambitious for my clients and hopeful for the planet. Considering everything is on fire right now - climate crisis, mental health decline, racial & gender inequality, the list goes on… I’m really only interested in harnessing the power of creativity to build brands that positively contribute to people and the planet. As our brands progress, the world should progress too. I’m on the Ethics Board at House337, a member of Purpose Disruptor’s ‘Change The Brief’ Sustainability Alliance and my team were runner-up in Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising award in ’22. At Portas, I was involved in ‘The Kindness Economy’; an agency philosophy fronted by Mary about business as a force for good (back then it was a radical POV and not yet in the mainstream). We created an agency podcast, foresight reports and a TED Talk to spread the word.

Being named in the ‘Future Leaders’ list by Creative Equals x Campaign in ’21 was particularly special as Ali and her team at Creative Equals are an organisation with a higher calling that I admire. I’m passionate about supporting the next-gen of creatives to continue to move things forward and have been a Creative Mentor Network Ambassador since 2020.

So there we go. Three failures, so many lessons, all playing their part in shaping the human and leader I am today. Also a trophy goes to you, that was a heck of a lot of reading. Thanks for baring with me.