Transforming from the Inside Out: A Journey in Creative Leadership

It’s been interesting moving through life as a soulful painter, poet, nature-loving, and magically oriented being who keeps finding her way into the confines of Corporate America. I started my career in design in 2002, navigating a variety of creative roles across different companies—including a non-profit—but the majority of my time has been spent within major corporations. I’ve often pondered how a creative being moves through structures and rhythms that don’t feel organic or alive like the people within them. Somehow, I made it work. I can easily activate both sides of my brain, seeing the big picture alongside the fine details, while building genuine relationships with almost anyone. This balance became my magic sauce for thriving in a somewhat inhospitable environment. Ultimately, the Master of Arts in Creative Leadership (MACL) program at MCAD has brought all my worlds together, illuminating a brightly lit path toward the future.

Transforming from the Inside Out:

A Journey in Creative Leadership

Everything about the MACL program at MCAD spoke to me from the beginning. Coming from a background in energy healing, the concepts of self-reflection and awareness immediately resonated with my worldview and the Hermetic principle of Know Thyself. If you are not deeply aware of your own behaviors, actions, and thoughts, there is much less space to intentionally guide yourself or others toward a new horizon.

Throughout this program, the art of noticing became my foundational practice for relational leadership. I have deepened my awareness of how I listen, how I respond, and how much space—or lack thereof—I create for other voices to be heard. This internal shift quickly manifested outward. Early on, during Theory & Practice of Creative Leadership, as I read about mindsets, reframing, active listening, and creating new worlds, something clicked deeply within me: I do not need permission to create change, speak my mind, or try something new—always, of course, with care and respect for other beings.

1

Driving Evolution within the Organization

Emboldened by this realization, I stopped waiting for permission and began introducing new ideas to my organization. I started designing creative workshops that built in connection exercises, intentionally bringing together cross-functional designers who didn't yet know each other.

In Designing for Complexity and Social Impact with Adel El-Huni, I introduced a prototype that redesigned the manager/employee 1:1 session, engaging various leaders and employees to run through it with me. Taking their feedback, I refined the script and supporting materials to give to my capstone workshop cohort as a tool for their own relational leadership toolkit.

This evolution accelerated during Managing Human-Centered Organizations with Mary-Jo Kaplan. I began intentionally offloading decisions and moving toward a decentralized approach, actively asking my teams and the designers I work with to put forward their own solutions and define their next steps. I even introduced a sociocracy decision-making model in one of our meetings. My boss took notice of this transformation, expressing how exciting it was to see me driving new ways of working. When he asked what had changed, I told him simply: "I stopped waiting for permission." It was a revelation that surprised him, shedding light on a silent barrier that holds so many back.

The program also provided critical frameworks that helped me navigate real-time corporate challenges. During Finance and Structure with Joseph Barisonzi, we analyzed the mechanics of corporate partnerships and the implicit, overwhelming workloads they often generate for employees. Shortly after, my own organization took on a major partnership, and I found myself drowning in full-throttle, high-capacity demands. Armed with the vocabulary and concepts from our lessons, I went to my boss and spoke articulately about the need to establish a separate workflow or re-prioritize our existing commitments. Because I stood up for myself with framework-backed confidence, he escalated the issue to the company's managing committee. We successfully deprioritized non-essential tasks and initiated conversations for future funding.

Additionally, Creating Workplace Culture with Doug and Calida gave me the vocabulary and stance to constructively question leadership and HR regarding our hiring practices. This paralleled nicely with my day-to-day work, as I was finally able to add an additional Creative Director to my team with much more intention and awareness of the candidate experience.

2

Community Impact and the Capstone

My journey is culminating in my capstone project, a workshop series titled “The Connected Leader: Rehumanizing the Workplace through Relational Leadership.” This project feels like stepping directly into my true calling. Within it, I introduce ideas of self and somatic awareness, alongside active listening, to help participants navigate the corporate structures they inhabit.

The impact within this community has been immediate. I am building actionable tools for participants to move through discomfort and fear so they can manifest the changes they want to see. In their reflections, these leaders share that they are getting curious about themselves; they feel equipped to notice when they are being dysregulated by stressful corporate situations and now possess the tools to stay "uncomfortably in connection" to work through tension, rather than giving up in frustration and wanting to quit. Seeing people empower themselves is beautiful, but a parallel magic is happening: the leaders in this workshop are feeling deeply held and supported by one another, generating a rare gift of mutual connection. I am feeling this deeply as well; they are transforming me just as much as I am transforming them.

Commitment to Future Creative Change

This program has been deeply disruptive in the best way possible—there is no going back, only moving forward with the strength, tools, and courage to lead creative change.

I am committed to expanding The Connected Leader workshops (though the name may evolve) into a regular, ongoing cadence with shifting topics. I plan to launch a dedicated blog to synthesize the ideas and inspirations filling my head, using it as a digital hearth to connect with like-minded individuals and expand the wonderful network MCAD has helped me build. Long-term, I intend to scale these resources into recorded online courses and bespoke in-person events for companies that are awakening to the critical importance of human connection and community in the workplace and the world. I now know with absolute certainty that I have the tools, the support, and the vision to introduce new, relational ways of being into the world.

My work has only just begun.

• Written by Jenna Leskala MACL Graduate 2026, winner of the Van Derlip Award