Where It All Started (and Why It Still Matters)

I didn’t start my career chasing titles or technology.

I started it by chasing ideas.

Early on, I was fortunate to land at some truly iconic agencies, places where the work mattered, standards were unforgiving, and craft was non-negotiable. DDB, DeVito/Verdi, JWT, Grey, McCann, FCB, Wunderman. These weren’t just logos on a résumé; they were pillars of the industry. At the time, they felt permanent, cornerstones of advertising itself.

Walking those halls meant inheriting a belief system: ideas mattered. Taste mattered. And creativity, when done right, could move both culture and business. Watching many of those names disappear or be absorbed has been genuinely difficult. Not just because of the brands, but because of what they represented for those of us who learned our craft there. It marked the end of an era that inspired people to enter this business headfirst, believing deeply in the power of ideas.

Those environments still shape how I think about leadership and creativity today. Strategy and storytelling were never separate. Craft was never a “nice to have.” And the best leaders didn’t sit above the work, they stayed in it, pushing, refining, and making it better alongside their teams.

As my career evolved, the philosophy didn’t change; the context did. Timelines compressed. Channels multiplied. Pressure intensified. Budgets shrank. Expectations shifted from delivering a single “big idea” to producing ideas that could be proven effective by data. And somewhere along the way, creativity began to get stripped down, as numbers increasingly dictated how ideas were shaped, scaled, and allowed to endure. That tension is where I learned the importance of systems, not just concepts. How creative work can scale across hundreds of touchpoints without losing its soul, how brands stay coherent within complex ecosystems. And how trust is built, through clarity, consistency, and craft.

Today, at Clario Group, that full arc comes together.

Now, we’re operating in a moment where creativity is being reshaped by technology, data, and AI, but the fundamentals haven’t changed. Great work still starts with human insight. It still requires taste, judgment, and empathy. And it still demands leaders not only to lead when things are going well but to dig in deepest when they are not.

My role at Clario isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about stewardship, carrying forward what I took away from those iconic agencies, things they got right: standards, discipline, and a belief in ideas, while adapting them to today’s realities of speed, integration, complexity, and constant change.

Because no matter how advanced the tools become, the work only matters if it connects. And connection has always been, and will always be, human.

That’s where it all started for me.

And that’s exactly where it continues.