Creative Operations

Leila Sierra is a Creative and Business Operations leader and nonprofit advocate specializing in building scalable creative systems that amplify mission-driven impact. Over the past three years, she has focused her work on helping a nonprofit organization strengthen creative operations, implement sustainable workflows, and align storytelling with strategic objectives to maximize visibility, efficiency, and donor engagement.

As Head of Creative at PureGym Group, Karl leads a global in-house studio spanning multiple markets, delivering high-impact brand, campaign and digital work at scale. Karl specialises in bridging strategy and execution — shaping brand platforms, creative systems and ways of working that unlock both commercial impact and emotional connection. Passionate about inclusive, human-centred creativity, he champions work that makes people feel good, builds trust, and drives meaningful change.

Diana Davalos, Account Director at Storyteq, bridges technology expertise with long‑term partnership building across a broad portfolio of industries. With nearly a decade of experience across Europe, North America, and APAC in SaaS, martech, and media, she helps enterprise teams adopt smarter, scalable, and sustainable solutions, partnering with global brands to accelerate digital transformation and modernize complex creative ecosystems for more efficient, technology‑driven content production.

Erin Kent is a creative operations leader with a background in creative direction who challenges traditional ideas of workplace performance and productivity. Her work blends mindset, nervous system awareness, and unconventional leadership to help teams navigate change, expand creative thinking, and produce meaningful results. She is passionate about redefining what sustainable, human-centered productivity looks like inside modern organizations.

Mary Franck leads interdisciplinary design teams to create extraordinary experiences and activations, bringing people together to create shared moments and cultural landmarks. Drawing on her training in architecture, art, and technology, she infuses the built environment with data and stunning digital media to inform, inspire, and connect audiences. For over 15 years, she’s worked across the experiential field for some of the world’s leading brands, like Google, IBM, Cartier, and MGM.

Bethany leads creative operations at Saatva, driving large-scale campaign execution across omnichannel marketing. She partners across creative, legal, media, production and performance teams to design asset systems that support speed, governance, and brand consistency at scale.

Pete Markey is an award-winning marketer who has spearheaded growth at a number of leading household brands, including Boots, TSB, Aviva and the Post Office.

At Boots, he delivered 17 consecutive quarters of growth, record brand health, and over 3 million new Advantage Card customers. Most recently, he’s been developing a portfolio career working with agencies including Fusion Unlimited on their growth strategy and Boldspace on their AI proposition. He’s also been working on an exciting new brand launch for 2026 with celebrities Ben Shephard and Joel Dommett.

With a curious nature and over a decade of experience spanning both in-house and agency environments, Jess excels at taking action from ambiguity and building from the ground up. She is passionate about creative work, solving problems, and helping people by making things easier.

Corey loves operations, processes, and creating order to help others achieve their goals. With a hair shy of 20 years spent in the Creative Operations domain, he’s had almost as many successes as failures and genuinely loves life. He believes that the shortest way to get to where we’re going involves collaboration and empathy, that brevity matters and that you might as well be nice. Also, as an Apprentice Shinrin Yoku guide, you can usually find him in a forest.

Michelle Cortese is an XR designer, educator and author. She splits her professional time between Metaverse design leadership at Meta Reality Labs and teaching VR design at NYU. Her work explores immersive interaction systems; the ethical implications of embodied technology on end users; and the transmutation of human expression across new technologies and formats.

Michelle has authored AR and VR design research published via Bloomsbury, Meta, IEEE, OneZero, MIT's Immerse Journal and more; she has also exhibited work at CES, Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, and Sundance.