My first job post-college was at a fashion PR firm called BPCM. I was there when it was five employees and a few really amazing clients (i.e. Stella McCartney, Derek Lam when he was just starting out, Bruno Frisoni, etc.). Now they’re huge with offices in NYC, LA and London! I really loved that job because it showed me firsthand when I was really young what it was like to build a business. I always knew I wanted to go into editorial though, so I soon transitioned over to the fashion department of Lucky magazine, which led to a four-year stint at ELLE magazine and ELLE.com.

I honestly didn’t find the transition from college to “real life” daunting at all (until you get me started on the topic of apartment hunting in NYC). I had three solid internships under my belt (Interview magazine, W magazine and Harper’s Bazaar) and I was incredibly excited to start my career.

I was at StyleCaster as their Executive Fashion Director. It was 2010 and brands were really starting to understand the importance of creating their own content online, crafting voices to communicate with their consumers in a social way and building solid digital strategies. Not a lot of them had any idea where to even start, so they were going out to their editor contacts for help with content creation. I was getting a lot of consultation requests and figured we could create a new type of agency from the sudden demand. It took us less than a year to get started. 

We met at ELLE magazine! Everyone knows that starting a business with your best friend is certainly not the easiest thing in the world, but when all is said and done, we work very well together and we make it a priority to nurture our friendship as well as our business relationship.

I had watched Vanessa Bismarck and Carrie Phillips in the early days do such a splendid job building BPCM, and then I had joined StyleCaster as part of the launch team when there was no office and no website. Those two experiences were very inspiring to me and really planted the entrepreneurial seed in my head.

Loads of meetings and client calls, business breakfasts and lunches and one yoga class every single day. It’s how I chill out.

In the beginning, it was just Alex and I, working out of the Soho House every day. As we signed more clients, we slowly built out our team of content managers, designers and digital strategists. We also struck up a partnership with King & Partners, an incredibly talented agency helmed by Tony King, that creates digital platforms for luxury and fashion clients. Their services were very complementary to ours, so we thought an official partnership made sense, and it’s been a brilliant working relationship for the past few years.

I love being able to build the team here and hire extremely bright, intelligent people to surround myself with. It’s the hardest part of the job, but definitely the most rewarding. I also love coming up with innovative ideas for clients and being able to execute them from start to finish, ending up with something that we’re really proud of. The team is quite tight-knit and very creative.

A certain amount of discipline, great people skills to manage a team and a sense of humor.

I have a pretty full stable of hobbies and things I’m passionate about, so I make those things priorities as much as possible. I love yoga and running, so I carve out time in the wee hours of the morning or for an hour in the afternoon every day. I love cooking and I write a blog about it, so I dedicate a good amount of weekend time to that pursuit. It’s really about making a commitment to lead an interesting, varied and well-rounded life and sticking to it.

I would say that it’s important to consistently take time out to sit with yourself and have an honest look at your life and career to determine whether or not you like where you are and where you’re going. It’s so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and to never take stock of those things. When you’re clear-headed and able to see things from a larger perspective, it becomes simpler to figure out where you would like to be, and then take steps to get there. 

Right now, I genuinely wake up every day looking forward to being at CA and taking decisive actions towards the growth of the agency. Building a business has been an exhilarating experience. In terms of the future, I’ve always been interested in the art market, so getting to work with clients in that realm (i.e. galleries, museums, foundations) would be a dream.