If you could attribute one other person or life event to your success, who or what would it be and why?
It’s never just one person and I think that’s the beauty.
It starts at home. None of the jumps I have made happen without a partner willing to say “sure, let’s try that” when “that” means walking away from something steady to try something completely new. That kind of support is quiet, daily, and it’s what allows you to grow.
Then there are the people who saw something in you before you fully saw it in yourself. Clare Pickens took a huge chance and helped me shift gears into an industry I had no business being in on paper (forever grateful and best opportunity I got). And Richard Green, at the start of COVID, when the world had just stopped, took a chance on someone who had just begun their freelance journey and didn’t exactly fit the mold. It worked wonderfully. And it reminded me that the best things often happen when someone bets on you before you’ve proven it on paper.
Each of them gave me a little more confidence. A little more runway. And I think that’s what people underestimate, it’s rarely one big break. It’s a series of people choosing to believe in you, and that accumulation is what allows you to grow, pivot, and eventually back yourself.
What is something the industry isn’t paying attention to that they should?
Curiosity. Genuine, restless, slightly inconvenient curiosity.
AI accelerates everything and it’s a remarkable tool. But right now it also can have us all thinking in surprisingly similar ways. And the pressure for short-term results doesn’t help either; when every decision needs to show a return, you stop making space for the kind of thinking that sees things differently. The industry knows curiosity matters – it talks about it constantly. But the structures we’ve built are quietly working against it. So curiosity is becoming a conscious choice rather than a natural byproduct of how we work.
What part of your role as a leader do you find most rewarding?
Building the environment where people can grow into their own potential. Where they feel free to question, get it wrong, find their voice, and back themselves. When that clicks, when someone becomes more than they thought they could be, that’s the part that makes this job so good.
