I usually work on small int'l teams responsible for big regions, where issues that surface are immediately taken seriously due to the implications to a large user and manufacturing base… small decisions affect a lot of people. From fields to factories to distribution channels and office staff — an established business losing pace in high growth markets mean eventual job losses across the board, in countries where there sometimes aren’t safety nets for employees.

Working on dominant brands in a category (sometimes with century-old legacy companies), they tend to be less focused on $ growth and scaling due to their global dominance. The key focal points are usually how they are pacing against category and (global) GDP growth vs. currency fluctuations across regions... and also emerging/ competitive innovations. These tend to reveal where changes are needed to ensure market dominance is maintained. The domestic companies, startups and non-profits I’ve been exposed to tend to be more concerned with attracting resources, scalability and capacity building (in that order) where addressing one gives rise to issues in the next.
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Regional/ int’l teams are an added layer/ expenditure, and demonstrate returns by accelerating progress of the country teams. The prevalence of the overarching culture is much reduced, partly because int’l teams prefer it, partly because it’s more expedient to the business needs of regional environments. Spaces where people from various geographies and levels of the organization continuously pass through, where insights/ issues can be shared, experimented on or further developed. An idea that surfaces in one country might be developed at the regional level and tested in another before being elevated to a global team. Individuals from one country might be invited to collaborate in the regional office on an extended project for launch across multiple countries. The more successful capacity-building programs are often led from regional hubs due to proximity/ better local integration. These teams also seem to be more permanent fixtures in cities that are dual financial and political capitals, where the cycle of entry/ exit of international talent is constant and provides a community for more transient employees.

My role was very specialized. I’d usually focus on a particular brand when a cross-disciplinary team couldn’t move the needle on a creative reinvention/ repositioning. I’d be involved for 8-10 months to lead a strategic and creative change, then turn it back over to the team lead to continue. Sometimes this would be regionally, sometimes locally. Increasingly, my insight was sought out more upstream in the product development process.  

I am proud of my ability to immerse myself in teams that were really different to me — to induce paradigm shifts, to dig up new insights, to elevate the strategic and creative capacity of the teams — and how we collectively came up with interesting ideas and experiences. These were across cookies and crackers, jeans, san pro, haircare, beauty, gum, and a few other categories.
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My disappointments stem from growing too tired to be interculturally persuasive… that even though it may be more difficult than people anticipate, there really is an interesting world out there and people aren’t that different. In the current geopolitical context, it’s become easier to let people swim in their (preferred) sameness.

I've always been interested in experimenting with media, its evolving forms and its role as a catalyst for systemic and societal changes. It’s always an interesting time to experiment when technology is being absorbed into the social, ecological and biological. The role of media + technology in societal de-/re-construction and how individuals are using it to circumnavigate long-standing oppressions, are themes I am currently exploring. These are informed by navigating global infrastructures, seeing how legal structures and trade policies seem to shape them, and falling through structural gaps and perceptual disconnects in a rapidly globalizing world.  

While I’d like to say I’m a citizen of the world, I actually only have citizenship (and voting rights) in Canada.

With frequent relocation, I found billing int'l clients through an incorporated Canadian company allowed me to work on short-term contracts in different countries without a work visa. After founding a company in 2005 for this purpose, it fell dormant for several years before being recently resurrected as gngha.media. It now houses R&D and production for my bigger artistic projects and collaborations.