Maryam Cristillo grew up between cultures and continents, studied anthropology and art in the same breath, and has spent her career building creative teams at places like Victoria’s Secret, Naadam, and now Lindt, where she gets to do creative work on chocolate, which she will tell you is exactly as good as it sounds. She also runs a seventeen acre homestead in Maine with her husband, a hundred chickens, and two kids who roam the property wearing bells so she can hear where they’ve got to. There is a lot of love in how she talks about all of it.

This conversation moves through some unexpected and tender places. We talk about a stutter she overcame with the help of a stranger her father introduced her to, about her mother scrubbing restaurant toilets to give her children a different life, and about a poster covered in ampersands that has quietly shaped how Maryam thinks about ambition ever since. We talk about leading creative teams with real care, about learning the difference between empathy that helps and empathy that overwhelms, and about why investing in yourself sometimes means stepping outside the four walls of wherever you happen to work. Underneath all of it is the same through line: people, properly seen and properly cared for, are the whole point.

If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes.

Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com and book a call.

I’d genuinely love to hear from you.

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