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It’s always tough to leave a place that was so supportive in so many ways. I won’t list them all but a few stand out:
- I always found an ear and encouragement for my crazy ideas.
- The opportunities to grow didn’t offer incremental growth; they offered substantial growth.
- I always felt the leadership of my department and the agency genuinely championed my career development.
- McKinney always offered a sense of possibility - for myself and my brand teams. Nothing was off the table, ever. It was all possible, always.
As I write this I feel a need to single out some people and thank them so you all know about them, but then this would sound like an Oscar speech and that would just be a bit self-aggrandizing. But suffice it to say, there are some special people at that agency I would, in a heart beat, love to work with again and will be sad to leave.
But change is a good thing. It’s necessary. That’s why, after 3½ fun-filled and intellectually stimulating years, I’m ready to tackle my next challenge.
As of January 7th, I will join Brian Collins as the head of strategy for his new design firm: Collins. Specifically, we will be a transformation design firm. (As many of you have read in my blog, TD is an emerging discipline with only a handful of practitioners worldwide. While, these firms successfully focus their efforts on the social services sector – i.e. transportation, healthcare, public restrooms, disaster relief, etc – we will expand TD’s reach into the innovation-starved marketing industry to provide a fresh perspective and approach to creating emotionally and transactionally strong relationships between people and companies.)
Collins presents me with an opportunity to not only practice what I’ve preached/devised on this blog but also to help build a new department, a new firm and a new discipline. I could not be more excited for this opportunity or feel more passionately about what we’re doing.
The Southern Part of Heaven has been fun, but for right now, it’s off to New York I go.
