Lead From Inside the Work
Creative leadership through teaching, mentorship & community building
My approach to creative leadership has been shaped in a lot of different rooms and from a very young age. I’ve led from classrooms, boardrooms, community meetings, public art projects, and sometimes from the middle of a paint site with a brush in my hand.
I’ve learned that good creative leadership isn't about having every answer. It's about setting a clear direction, communicating the why, and creating space for other people to contribute. It’s about knowing when to step in and when to let someone else take the brush.
Teaching Designers to conceptualize
As an Adjunct Professor of Graphic Design at Elizabethtown College, I taught courses ranging from Graphic Design I and Typography & Text Design to upper-level Graphic Design III.
Teaching design quickly reinforced all those things I learned back in my own time as a student. Just to name a few:
Concept is king. What is your idea and how are you going to communicate that.
Make people think: Happy, sad, mad, those are valid emotions that we can make people feel though design.
You just have to care: Care about the world. Care about people.
Take pride in your work: no dog ears or crooked edges.
In the classroom, my job was to establish the problem and the expectations, then help students develop their own solutions. Critiques meant identifying why something was or wasn't working, asking the right questions, and adapting feedback to the person receiving it.
That experience changed the way I give creative feedback, because for many it was the first time they ever participated in a critique. It reminded me how personal design can and should be, yet at the same time needs to be universal.
Most importantly though was incorporating analog techniques into this program. For many students this was the first time needed to do sketches or print their work out. Making them pick up a pencil or pen and practice just being creative was such a good reminder for my own practice.
Leadership In Practice:
Creative Direction · Critique & Feedback · Mentorship · Presentation · Design Education · Communication
Building Something for a Community
Some of my most formative leadership experiences happened outside a traditional creative department.
As a founding member and Director of Marketing for the Elizabethtown Farmers Market, I helped shape the identity and public-facing experience of a new community initiative. When it came time to develop the market's visual identity, I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of my graphic design students.
One of my favorite working sessions happened after class. We printed her concepts again and again, laid them out, stepped back to see them from a distance, and worked through the smallest details together.
This is important for two reasons, one, getting students paid work and two that this is a real project, not just a classroom exercise.
My community work also created opportunities to collaborate with other designers and artists. I worked alongside a local designer on the Discover Elizabethtown identity and later connected with the Winters Heritage House Museum, where I helped restore the historic Donegal to Donegal mural.
As President of AAF-Greater Frederick, my focus expanded to advocating for fellow creatives and helping bring educational workshops and programming to our members. A few years later, I was invited to judge the AAF-Kansas City ADDY Awards alongside a panel of accomplished creative professionals, an opportunity that still feels like a meaningful full-circle moment.
These experiences taught me that creative leadership isn't only about directing the work. It's also about supporting the people doing it, creating opportunities to learn, and contributing to a stronger creative community.
Creating Structure for Participation
That philosophy has followed me into my public art practice.
I've led assistants, volunteers, and students through mural installations and community paint experiences. This includes projects where participants had little or no painting experience.
The challenge isn't simply getting more hands onto a wall. The artwork has to be intentionally designed and the production carefully planned so that people can meaningfully contribute without compromising the final result.
That means creating the system first: determining what can be painted collaboratively, preparing materials, explaining the process and establishing enough guardrails for people to feel confident.
Then I try to get out of the way.
I've watched students who initially told me they couldn't paint become comfortable enough to pull their own lines. I've seen people stop between classes to spend a few minutes making something with their hands. I’ve heard them say how relaxing it was. And I've watched a project become more meaningful because the people who would eventually experience it also had a hand in creating it.
That's the kind of creative leadership I value most: creating enough structure for other people to succeed inside it.
Leading From Inside the Work
I don't believe creative leadership means becoming disconnected from making.
I'm comfortable establishing the concept, presenting the direction, and coordinating the people needed to execute it. I'm equally comfortable rolling up my sleeves when the work requires it.
Sometimes leadership looks like presenting an idea to a room of stakeholders. Sometimes it's giving a student feedback they can actually use. Sometimes it's coordinating artists, volunteers, and logistics.
Working across higher education, community organizations, client projects, and public art has taught me to not only move between those roles without losing sight of the larger idea but also enjoy myself while doing it.