Global design leader with a focus on visual creative excellence in product and digital
Tabogganing / Credit: Joshua Shelly
Leadership essentials:
Hire people that have Taste, Character and Grit
Build a culture of mutual Trust, Respect and Accountability
Provide opportunities for Empowerment, Ownership and Growth
Give direction that is Specific, Contextualized and Prioritized
Speak and lead with Empathy, Transparency and Realism
My parents had a hard time putting down roots.
I spent my formative years running around the English countryside and old villages of the South of France. Then was teleported to the sun-scorched and surf wax-stained San Fernando Valley in 6th grade. There’s always been friction between those opposite identities. The well-mannered British schoolboy and the kid who’d fuck off for 5 hours riding shorebreak at Zuma beach.
As I got older I found myself attracted to people and pursuits that ran counter to my polite British upbringing and anything that quieted my restlessness. I took up fringe sports like bodyboarding, rock climbing, and trail running. I got sweaty in mosh pits, slept on the beach, studied art and designed websites for my sister’s friends in my spare time.
I got my foot in the door making movie websites for Sony Pictures in 2008 and did everything I could to stack experience and stretch myself from there. I’d quit jobs when the challenge dried up and move to the next. That drive led me to design flight control systems for autonomous aircraft alongside NASA engineers, define the visual design principles for a global streaming product, invent a new way to experience car buying online and build 100s of banner ads for a creative campaign I had nothing to do with (a right of passage).
Almost 20 years on that path now and the challenges come from different places. How do you build and scale, both a top-performing but also a happy and fulfilled creative team? How do you launch a project in the face of messy corporate politics? How do you raise two kids, have a healthy marriage, stay in touch with close friends, call your dad more than twice a year, renovate a house, workout regularly and have a killer career at the same time?
I still live in the Valley, I don’t get in the water as much as I used to but I’m still scratching the creative itch as a leader, builder and champion of the Work.