Insights from Joanna Wallace at Foxwell Founders Meet-Up, NYC
Why It Matters
AI has made creative work faster and made real talent harder to spot, since a polished portfolio or take-home assignment may be AI-generated. Joanna Wallace’s point is that the teams who win in 2027 will be built on people, not tools: clear role definitions, the most senior strategists you can afford, and editors and designers who are invested in performance rather than just executing. Hiring too junior wastes ad spend, and burning people out means paying recruiting fees again and again. Her fixes are practical. Vet candidates with live walkthroughs instead of static tests, hire for the missing slices of the team instead of chasing a unicorn, and back it all with psychological safety and respect for your creatives’ time.
Who This Is For
Built for Founders members who are hiring or leading creative teams, whether in-house at a brand or inside an agency. Especially useful if you’re writing a creative strategist job description, deciding between full-time, contract, and agency support, or struggling to tell real strategic depth from AI-polished work.
Joanna Wallace’s presentation, “Building the Creative Team You Need for 2027,” at the Foxwell Founders Meet-Up in NYC, was an experience packed with tough truths and practical wisdom for anyone looking to build or lead a creative team.
Joanna, with her extensive agency and in-house experience, gave us the behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to thrive as AI becomes a bigger part of our world.
The Human Edge in an AI World
Joanna kicked things off with a big statement: AI is everywhere now, and sure, it’s a game-changer, but people are still the secret sauce.
Looking ahead to 2027, the most effective creative teams will work together, think critically, and use AI as a tool and not a crutch. The best creative minds are treating AI like a partner, not a replacement for their own creativity or gut instincts. Joanna kept coming back to this: creative strategy is about human connection, empathy, and telling stories that hit home.
She really hammered home the idea of customer empathy. If your customers don’t feel seen, what’s the point? The only way to get there is by building teams where everyone cares, trust is through the roof, and people feel safe enough to take creative risks. Otherwise, you’ll end up with bland, forgettable campaigns
Understand Creative Roles and Avoid Hiring Pitfalls
Joanna’s own journey (spanning agencies like Tube Science and Rick House, leading creative strategy at Hexclad, and now running CreativeRx Consulting) has given her a unique vantage point on the hiring challenges brands and agencies face. She highlighted a common brand mistake: not knowing exactly what they’re hiring for.
“Creative strategist” has become a catch-all title, but junior strategists, senior strategists, and directors differ in critical ways. Misalignment between job descriptions and expectations leads to frustration, mismatched hires, and missed goals.
She broke down the four levels in creative strategy:
Junior Strategist: Learning the ropes, needs mentorship, can’t operate alone.
Creative Strategist: Owns briefs, understands sprints, but isn’t a leader yet.
Senior Strategist: Runs pods, reviews work, balances accounts, and thinks holistically.
Director/Head: Operates at both micro and macro levels, aligning creative with broader business goals.
Too often, brands try to save money by hiring juniors instead of seasoned strategists, only to see those juniors overwhelmed and the brand’s investment wasted. Joanna’s advice: hire the most senior talent you can afford, or ensure strong mentorship if you must hire junior.
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Test Talent in the Age of AI
One of Joanna’s standout points was how AI has made it harder to vet true creative talent. A polished portfolio or an impressive take-home assignment can be AI-driven, not human-generated. Her solution? Go beyond static tests. Have candidates present their thinking, walk through ad manager setups, and demonstrate their approach live. This exposes depth of knowledge, adaptability, and genuine expertise qualities AI can’t fake.
Joanna challenged the idea that organizations should search for a single “unicorn hire” who can do it all. Rather than focusing on finding one person with every possible skill, she recommended adopting a more deliberate, team-based approach to hiring. She suggested leaders focus on assembling teams where each member contributes distinct abilities, ensuring that, as a group, all critical expertise is represented. Joanna used the metaphor of a pie to illustrate this concept, encouraging teams to view their required capabilities as slices that together form a whole. The hiring objective, she explained, should be to identify and recruit individuals who bring missing pieces to the table (talent who fill gaps in the team’s skills) rather than hiring people with redundant strengths.
The Unsung Heroes: Editors and Designers
Strategists don’t exist in a vacuum. Editors and designers are often overlooked but are essential creative partners. She described two types: the “robot” who executes without passion or attention to detail, and the “strategist-editor/designer” who is invested in performance and improvement. You want the latter on your team, and they must be fully integrated and looped into meetings, feedback, and culture.
Full-Time, Contract, or Agency?
The pros and cons of different hiring models:
Full-Time: Offers ownership and commitment, but requires investment.
Contract: Brings outside perspective but can lack accountability and deep integration.
Agency: Great for bandwidth and experimentation, but needs strong in-house partnership to avoid slip-ups.
No matter which way you go, you absolutely need someone inside your company to keep communication and quality on track between your brand and any agency partners.
Remote, Hybrid, and International Teams
When it comes to remote versus in-office, Joanna didn’t mince words. Top talent isn’t coming back to the office just because you say so. If you want the best people, you’ve got to make remote work, well, work. That means adapting your workflows and communication. And if you’re selling to Americans, hire in or near your time zone, otherwise, you’re just asking for headaches.
Culture, Respect, and Retention
You can have all the strategy and process in the world, but if your culture stinks, none of it matters. You need psychological safety, respect, and a drama-free environment. People have to feel safe enough to throw out ‘stupid’ ideas. Wins and losses are on the whole team, not just one person.
Joanna encouraged companies to “date” candidates as much as candidates “date” companies, and to pay for take-home assignments as a sign of respect. Small gestures like offering slightly more than asked in salary have an outsized impact on motivation and loyalty.
The Final Takeaway: People First, Always
Joanna wrapped up with her core message: soft skills turn into cold, hard cash. If you hire too junior, you waste ad spend. If you burn people out, you pay recruiting fees over and over. The ultimate secret is building a people-first culture, investing in mentorship, and treating creatives as the invaluable resource they are.
In a future dominated by automation and AI, the creative teams that win will be the ones that put people first, nurturing, trusting, and empowering their talent to connect, create, and innovate.
Want Joanna Wallace's full talk?
Replay · Foxwell Founders NYC 2026
Building the Creative Team You Need for 2027
The four creative strategist levels, why two juniors cost more than one senior, and how to vet candidates live in Ads Manager. It's one of 8 sessions in our Q4 Media Buying Crash Course, recorded live in New York.
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