Creative direction + adaptive leadership

Meet me on the playing field between well worn experience, and a curiosity for that which doesn’t exist yet.

Results naturally fall out of the way we think, the way we notice, and the way we move. Prioritize, decide, act, reflect, adapt (it’s circular)—this is how I lead.

I’m energized by collaborators who are game to steer concepts into reality by engaging with the dynamic, passive, and autonomous forces in front of us. It’s an intentional creative practice that points towards more than just final outcomes…it generates extra time, ease to recharge the effort, and surprising solves along the way.

Experience
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Play for motivation

This mashup pumps me up every time I watch it. SOUND ON!*

*Language is generally NSFW. 😜

Currently reading

There’s SO MUCH interesting terrain to explore in this little book…technological advancement is inherently organic. It’s deeply seeded with history, requires radical presence, and is future-invested. Is what you’re building driven by profit motives but lacking vision? This read is a gentle nudge.

Look, it’s natural to confuse always being busy spinning many plates with productive momentum. It’s also natural to seek out ways to reprioritize, commit, and see the most ambitious mission through to completion. This read holds principles worth testing somewhere in life or work.

Social media expanded my world for a good decade. Now, though, the scroll feels like a massive contraction. The tool is benign, but what we do with it can skew destructive…how I want to engage with it right now unclear. When things are unclear, I step back, and see what reveals its self.

“Lisa is the delightfully improbable locus of deeply intuitive, rigorous and intentional, wacky and exuberant, and endlessly curious. To experience Lisa’s art is to experience her as a colleague is to experience her as a person out in the world. That is to say, she is authentic, and present, and all-in.”

BETH, Copy lead

My path has swerved from commercial illustration to giftware design to corporate retail to tech. It’s taught me to identify what changes, and what stays the same across design industries.

No story is stick straight—but I aim to take the bird’s-eye view and spot the subtle through lines. I want to know: What actually connects people? What defines a useful product or service? And how do we set the conditions for them to become sustainable?

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  • Adaptive guidance

    Why adaptive? At the very core of guidance is a sensitivity to assess context, help others gain confidence in a way forward, and place bets on the most impactful approach.

    Leadership does not look, sound, or feel one way—we need more voices in this arena to model success for introverts and deep listeners with a conviction to connect—I’m one of them.

    My instincts show me:

    ⚡︎ when to direct
    ⚡︎ when to step back
    ⚡︎ when to let others lead
    ⚡︎ when to delegate
    ⚡︎ when to act
    ⚡︎ when to analyze
    ⚡︎ when to wait

    Experiment, learn, adapt.

  • Sustainable upleveling

    Upleveling the status quo doesn’t always come with a roadmap. You’re a people manager at a loss for time to catch up, resources to depend on, and the space to free up bottlenecks.

    I work alongside other creative directors to craft adaptable, lean, highly prioritized action plans, turning limitations and into:

    ⚡︎ creative strategy
    ⚡︎ product development
    ⚡︎ team workflow
    ⚡︎ team structure

    There is NO SHAME in tapping a sounding board, a coach, or a creative partner to hash out an upgrade. Seeking partnership at the right time is a boss move—your team is learning from your example, and you want them learning skills that free you up.

  • Smoother operations

    You’re trying to do what you came here to do…BE CREATIVE. But you can’t relax into your creative brain when it’s eclipsed by time restraints.

    I teach people how to set limitations up for growth with the MVP approach (minimum viable product), and I promise, once it starts working for you, you will feel like the other kind of MVP.

    I’m trained in Scrum, but you don’t need to be in order to benefit from its essentials—I simplify the basic principles to help you protect space for creation through:

    ⚡︎ auditing
    ⚡︎ prioritizing
    ⚡︎ negotiating
    ⚡︎ clearing paths towards lightweight, actionable systems that withstand scaling up and down.

  • Demystified creative

    You’ve tried talking to designers, copywriters, or developers, or but don’t seem to have the language…which has led to misunderstanding, frustration, and a bypassing conversations altogether.

    Chronically bypassing creatives due to common communication gaps costs time and money we don’t like to admit to. Let me clear something up:

    1. We are ALL creative. 2. What we call “creatives” in the workplace are people just like you, working in unique areas of discipline, domain, and expertise. 3. Good news: I can show you ways to bridge the communication gap.

    You don’t have to give up on asking for what you need, you just need coaching to point you towards an adjustment.

Q. Did ALL of the stuff you described above come naturally to you?

A. Picture me throwing a BIG. JUICY. SLAB🥩. OF. NO! down on the table.

Lots of trial and error, people. I started life as an observant, sensitive, disorganized artist, who ran purely on impulse. I combine my natural gifts with a willingness to learn methods of structure and discipline that help me work around my constraints.

The practices I advocate for, when repeated in the right context, with the right people, creates compound wins over time.

My guidance is for you if:

✅ Initiatives have been sitting in the should/would/what if pile, when you KNOW they could be SO useful if you could move them forward

✅ Creative systems and processes are working okay-ish, but things feel bumpy, and you know it could be smoother

✅ You’re willing to BOLDLY prioritize and simplify in order to steer complex and never-ending internal initiatives into use

✅ Leadership consistently provides a clear vision or mission, and is willing to trust their team to figure out the how

My guidance is not for you if:

⛔️ You’re looking for individuals to make up for a severely dysfunctional company culture

⛔️ “This is the way we’ve always done it” is the end of the story

⛔️ Prioritizing, deprioritizing, and negotiating terms is not welcome or available to the creative department

⛔️ Leadership won’t commit to defining the vision or mission, and tends to skip straight to dictating how to do the work

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