Stephanie Gipson Malaki
One person I truly admire as a good human and senior creative leader is Stephanie Gipson Malaki. I met Stephanie when she led the design team on the T-Mobile retail account at The Garrigan Lyman Group. Stephanie is supremely talented, uncommonly wise, and has a natural confidence about her that inspires teams and reassures clients in the murky waters of early design and creative development.
These days, Stephanie works directly with brands to design digital customer experiences at her own LLC, Pluto. I had the great pleasure of catching up with her recently at Coffeeholic House in Greenwood. Stephanie was as generous and charming as ever and happy to share a few tales of her adventures in the creative biz and her perspective on life and career. Here’s some of what I learned:
1) Sync on values to thrive as partners: When you team up with a business partner, make sure you are aligned on values early on, such as the types of clients to go after, the type of work you’ll take on, the number of hours you’ll put in, and how the money will divvied up. These seem like basics from afar, but they often go unaddressed in the rush of a new partnership until circumstances create a reckoning. It’s better to address these values-related issues right out of the gate to be set up for long-term success.
2) Know your priorities. As a mother of two and a busy creative professional, Stephanie came to terms a while back with what her number one priority is; her family. Every day since, she’s made decisions with that clarity. In the business world, companies are getting better at how they support employees, especially working women, to enable a thriving career and a healthy work/life balance. Still, the number one person looking out for you is you. So know what your priorities are and your life (and career) will head in the direction you want.
3) Dial in what you love to do: As a senior creative leader at several agencies, the point person for building out creative teams, and a sole proprietor now, Stephanie has spent many hours doing work that is either creative or operational. She’s found that her sweet spot is about 80 percent creative, 20 percent operations. Knowing that ratio allows her to focus on what she loves do to and where she best partners with others. What is your ideal ratio? Are you achieving that now or do you have some adjustments to make?
It was great to reconnect with Stephanie and I can’t wait to catch up again soon. Thank you for the coffee-fueled conversation!
#creativedirection #digitaldesign #worklifebalance #coffee #thankyou