As Creative Director at Gainful, my role on the leadership team is to support the creative, brand & marketing teams in a high-growth startup environment. This includes strategizing creative efforts, iterating on data & analytics, and fostering a peer-to-peer creative environment in which everyone’s ideas are valued, creative risks are encouraged, and the results speak for themselves.

Creative Leadership.  I am invigorated by the constant challenge that is leading a team of creatives and defining a positive creative culture in such a lean, high-growth company. I learn on my feet all the time. My approach has always been to be the best manager to individual team members—to learn how each member of my team prefers to receive feedback and what they need from me to enable them to do their best work. I am incredibly proud of being an empathetic creative leader, both to my own team and those I partner with.

Codify & Elevate Brand. Since we codified the Gainful brand aesthetic and unified the visual language across paid & organic platforms, it is apparent that our users have an increasingly clear view of who we are, as is evidenced by our 69k follower growth YOY.

Digital Product. Building the cross-functional bridge between design, product, and engineering—which includes establishing scalable processes & workflows—is an achievement that will continue to be felt beyond the small group of people involved. The dedicated focus on understanding our users’ needs and implementing UI/UX changes quickly helped Gainful achieve 47% YOY Growth.