Maria Devereux is an Executive Creative Director with Colenso BDDO and a passionate member of the Mentally Healthy Change Group. She won six Cannes lions in her first six years as an Art Director with Colenso. Since then she has held creative leadership roles at TAXI Canada, Special Group and Y&R NZ. She's motivated by that perfect mix of innovation and optimism which leads to seemingly inevitable creative solutions. In 2019 Maria was named in Adweek’s Creative 100 and in 2020 she was awarded a Certificate of Excellence at Campaign Asia’s Women Leading Change Awards. 

In this episode Maria talks about...

— why understanding what makes people tick is the key to marketing;

— how she graduated from a graphic design role to creative leadership roles with some of the best agencies in the world;

— whether creativity is an innate skill or something that can taught and learned;

— being brave as a creative and why you're only as good as your last idea;

— her passion for bluegrass and cross-stitching and what hobbies have to do with the creative process;

— the importance of being provocative in order to stand out from the crowd;

— her husband's battle with mental health illness;

— why she's obsessed with bringing more empathy into the workplace;

— why it's okay to be yourself at work and live an authentic life in and out of work;

— how advertising can help change the world for the better;

— attracting more diversity into the advertising industry;

... and much more.