Growing up, I wanted to be an artist. The medium didn’t matter… give me my bare hands, a wall and some mud and I was happy. When I got older, I realized that this was one the few professions where the word “starving” could be added as a prefix. This was my first exercise in troubleshooting… how do I art and not starve?Ever heard of a “starving art director”? Neither have I.I got my first job in the industry while I was still in school. I took a mat-leave replacement position as the receptionist at Eskind Waddell – a company that I had been reading about for years in industry mags like Applied Arts. I left after over a decade later as Director, Digital Design, the last of the five titles that I had while I was there.I was the very first Global Creative Director at BlackBerry… the second and final GCD was Alicia Keys (but she kept tweeting from an iPhone, which was less than ideal).I’M A BRAND GUY. I’ve branded and managed some of Canada’s leading brands (BlackBerry, Biovail Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline, TD Bank, AGF Mutual Funds, most of the brands that you see at Canadian Tire and many more).I’M A DESIGNER. Handsomely rewarded by my industry colleagues for work I’ve done with clients like Canada Post, TD Bank, Xerox, Canadian Tire, IHG Canada (Holiday Inn/Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental Hotels, etc.) and not-for-profit work for Youth Without Shelter and Pride Toronto.I’M A DIGITAL MARKETING NERD. I drool over analytics and love coming up with wacky ideas to bridge gaps and solve seemingly unsolvable problems. It was this goofy thought process that landed IHG Canada one of their most successful and transparent initiatives to date.I’M A PEOPLE PERSON. I love mentoring my team while sometimes it’s them that mentor me. I love navigating the internals of large companies to find efficiencies that work for my team with bonus points awarded if those efficiencies can also jump the fence into other teams. I love creating relationships with teams that seemingly have no overlaps to my team as they tend to introduce a wealth of opportunities that would have otherwise gone unnoticed, unknown and untapped.I’M A NUMBERS GUY. I’ve had client side roles where I managed anywhere from 5 figure - 8 figure budgets. I have run two agencies. One of them was on life support when I joined and with a reorganization, rebrand (including mission, vision, values) and rebuild of existing relationships, it turned into an award winning and highly profitable agency in less than 12 months.I still have dirty hands and I like it that way.