Hear Here Edition Three: “Creating Change”

On a warm May evening at Further’s studio in Long Island City, we hosted Hear Here in New York for the very first time.

For those who haven’t come across Hear Here before: it’s an invite-only event series we run at Craft for women and allies in creative leadership. It’s simply a space to hear from brilliant leaders, have honest conversations, and leave feeling enlightened by shared sentiments – not burdened by the issues our industry faces.

We started it because of a gap we kept seeing from our position in the industry.

… and fewer still stay in those positions.

In recruitment, we’d call that a retention issue, not an attraction issue. Hear Here is our contribution to changing that, by investing in the people already leading, rather than treating leadership as a problem to be solved.

New York felt like the right place to bring the series next. The creative industry here is dense, brilliant, and of course ever-changing, and the conversation we wanted to have felt urgent in this city specifically.

The topic? Creating Change. Our three panelists; Jolene Delisle, Founder of The Working Assembly; Jacquelyn De Jesu Center, Founder and Inventor of SHHHOWERCAP; and Magali Johnson, Senior Client Director at Further, have lived through change in completely different ways. What united them was that none of them had simply reacted to the shifts in front of them… They had, at key moments, chosen it, driven it, and refused to let it flatten them.

The leap came in 2019, and she described it as one of her biggest inflection points, made even more significant by the fact that she had just had a baby, and was about to have another!

Jacquelyn’s story took a different path: a more dramatic one. She described the moment she left agency life (a decade at top ad and strategy agencies, no less) to invent SHHHOWERCAP: a chance encounter outside an edit suite, a rich network of creatives, a family of inventors, and innovation guided by her own energy. Plenty of those pivotal shifts and significant moments where you can’t really put your finger on why or how it happened…

For Jacquelyn, change has always been guided by instinct, and that philosophy has carried her through a decade of building, and defending, what she created. She is a strong IP advocate and takes dupe culture seriously – something we can all relate to when it comes to owning your ideas.

Magali brought a different kind of change story: the experience of relocating from London to New York with Further, rebuilding her network from scratch, and watching the studio grow from a ‘startup mentality’ into genuine competitor to the known NYC agency names.

Her leap of faith to move across the world for work is one thing; putting herself in a position that felt positively uncomfortable is even more impressive. The move to New York was only possible because she didn’t panic and jump at the first sign of friction.

Some of the richest conversation of the evening was around the personal reflections, seperating the impressive credentials of this panel to unearth their true drivers. Knowing when it’s time to make a change in your life – when to push and when to leap – sparked a lot of thought.

Magali described the feeling of stagnation as her signal to change – but she was careful to distinguish that from impulsiveness. She spoke about the value of soft skills like empathy, listening, patience, and how these should be positioned as unwavering leadership strengths. “It was getting to a point where I felt, ‘I’m getting a lot less out of this than what I’m giving’ – and that, for me, is not enough.”

Jolene talked about buying her ice cream shop in 2023 as a way of doing something for herself at a moment when client services felt relentless. More recently, selling her agency in November has taken her into yet another new chapter. “I think it’s really important to listen to your guidance. We all have that premonition of when we know that it’s time for something different.”

Staying true to herself is Jacquelyn’s superpower. “What makes me great is what makes my company great, and what makes me awful is what makes my company awful. You really are faced with that mirror every minute, every day, every hour.”

So what’s next for our panelists? Everybody is going through change all the time – whether we know it or not – so we discussed what we’re navigating at this very moment.

Magali is watching Further New York grow into something she’s genuinely proud of, with a team of people competing for clients she couldn’t have imagined landing a few years ago. She’s also getting married – cue whoops from the audience!

Jolene is figuring out what it means to lead her agency as part of a larger company; how to retain her autonomy, and keep her team (75% of whom have been with her for over five years) engaged about what the acquisition means for them.

Jacquelyn is expanding. SHHHOWERCAP isn’t going anywhere, but she’s building something new; a grant programme, a consulting model, an invention portfolio.

A huge thank you to Further for sharing their beautiful studio with us, and thank you to everyone who came. The room made the evening, and the conversations that carried on long after the panel are exactly what Hear Here is for.

We’ll be back in New York. Watch this space.

Find out more about Hear Here, right here.