TEAM 
MANAGEMENT

With 25 years of experience building and leading in-house creative organizations, I help companies get more from their creative teams. I’ve done this at Cartoon Network, USA Network, NBCUniversal, Cox Enterprises, Colorado State University, and JLL. My teams have ranged from a local, on-site group of 12 to a 50-person, bi-coastal department and a fully remote global design team. I focus on four interdependent areas: Team Assessment, Workflow and Process, Technology and Systems—including AI Adoption—and Creative Development.

Team Assessment 

Existing relationships, tenure, change fatigue, and daily workload can cloud judgment and keep organizations from making needed changes, even when teams fall short of expectations.

I examine a team’s structure, purpose, goals, and individual responsibilities. Redundant roles, misaligned talent, and unclear responsibilities slow teams down. I identify strengths and gaps, build a structure around those strengths, hire where talent is missing, and align everyone around shared goals. The aim is to move teams through forming, storming, and norming to performing—where trust and momentum enable them to exceed expectations.

I’ve built teams from scratch and rebuilt existing ones. At Cartoon Network and, most recently, at JLL, I built teams that grew from the ground up. JLL’s team became a global Design Center of Excellence spanning the US, UK, India, and Costa Rica. I rebuilt teams at USA Network and NBCUniversal, where I led a 50-person, bi-coastal department in New York and Los Angeles. Having managed more than 100 creatives, I’ve learned to quickly identify a team’s strengths and gaps and reorganize accordingly. Sometimes that means helping people move on when the fit is no longer right. More often, realigning roles with individual strengths reenergizes the whole team.

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A high-performing team must also be well connected to the rest of the organization. At Colorado State University, I founded and chaired the CSU Marketing Council. At NBCUniversal, I served on the Executive Marketing Council. At JLL, I run outreach sessions and creative showcases for our global sales force so sales teams understand our capabilities and involve us early.

Workflow and Process

Creative projects rely on a few essential steps to stay on brief, within budget, and on schedule. Organizations often overlook these steps, creating confusion, rework, and stakeholder friction.

My five-step framework—Brief, Plan, Explore, Review, and Execute—defines the work and responsibilities at each stage. A clear process delivers measurable results. At NBCUniversal, my operational changes saved more than $500,000 annually. At Cox Enterprises, my process improvements generated $7M in cost savings. At Colorado State University, I reduced the creative operation’s deficit by 20% while increasing billings 25% year over year.

Technology and Systems

A process lasts when it’s built into the tools people use every day. I’ve implemented work management platforms for global teams, including Workfront, Monday.com, and others. I build intake, tracking, and reporting systems that give leaders a clear view of the work and give creatives more time to create. Most recently, I led AI adoption within JLL’s creative workflows, recommending and testing tools, training the team, and turning adoption into efficiency gains.

Creative Development

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Great creative work is the goal, and developing the team is how I get there. I bring curiosity and enthusiasm to every project and encourage teams to ask “What if?” and “What else?” to move beyond obvious answers. I set clear, high expectations and support people with coaching, room to explore, and honest feedback. Success comes in the output, but also from developing talent, which is why I’ve served as a director and mentor with AIGA.

The results speak for the team. The Charging Forward campaign at Colorado State University ran for four years. At Cox, a C-suite leader called our leadership offsite “the best event we’ve ever done,” and sales executives at JLL often tell us, “These are the best meetings of my day.”