When The Work Looks Like You

August of 2020 marked 10 years that I’ve worked in advertising. That’s a really long time to be doing anything and yet, every year flies by. During this time I’ve gotten married, moved 7 times and I’ve had two beautiful daughters. With everything going on it’s easy to go on autopilot. But every once in a while, you get a brief or see an opportunity that really lights you up. That’s what happened to me this year with our long-term client The Recording Academy.

The sobering reality is less than 2% of all popular music is produced by women. Nope that’s not a typo, two percent. But The Recording Academy is making strides to change that. Starting with the inclusion initiative #WomenInTheMix. Created over a year ago, it was launched to focus on getting more women into producing and engineering roles within the music industry.

To bring awareness to #WomenInTheMix, we knew we needed to leverage the transformative power of music. So in a simple, stripped down film, a fifty woman-strong, all-female choir performs a choral arrangement of Alicia Key’s single “Underdog.” One by one they sit down and stop singing until only 2% — one woman — remains. Like the song, our film is dedicated to people working for a better life, doing what they love. And that really touched me.

Strategy can often feel like a discipline dominated by men. In fact, advertising as a whole is a very white male space to work in. So as a Black woman and a mom, it’s not very often that I get to see myself in the work I do. But this project inspired me. From the story we told to the way we told it — we really brought a multi-generation and color representation of womanhood to life. We didn’t do that on our own, we made a point to bring the amazing Mollie Mills on to direct and supported her with other women in key roles like editors, musical arrangers, producers and account leads. We also brought together a choir of women that truly represented a diverse cohort of powerful female voices.

Together this amazing group of women helped create a piece of work that will at least keep me inspired and fighting to do what I love— for myself and my daughters.