TOP: DOVE, BEYOND COMPARE is a traveling exhibit showcasing the world's leading women photographers and their personal, often iconoclastic interpretations of what "beauty" means to them. BOTTOM: BROTHERHOOD is a New York Times bestselling book honoring New York firefighters in the aftermath of 9/11. TEAM: Micheal Ian Kaye, Bill Darling, Roman Luba, Soohyen Park, Brian Collins

BRIAN COLLINS, Duffy Protégé
Brian started out in his own studio in Boston in the ’80s. He spoke with us from Atlanta, where he was juggling meetings with Delta Airlines, Coca- Cola, and Kodak in his current capacity as executive creative director of the Brand Integration Group at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide.

A SUCCESS STORY
Every day I’m doing what I love to do. I get to work with obscenely smart people and open-minded clients in a first-class agency. I’m here due to blind luck and perseverance. But I also got to stand on good people’s shoulders along the way: Joe Duffy, Chuck McBride, and Rick Boyko. They shared some key traits:
1. They believed in me.
2. They listened.
3. They backed me up and stood by my ideas.
4. They were unselfish.
5. They genuinely cared.
6. They inspired me to think and work in new ways.
7. They gave me a place at the table.

FIRST BIG BREAK
In 1990, I was working in my own studio in Boston when Joe Duffy hired me to be director of business development. The Duffy Group’s creative thinking was new, memorable, and seductive. It told stories at a time when others were immersed in sterile postmodernism. And while the work was always challenging, it was always accessible, bridging the gap between inventive design and mass culture. The work from that period, such as the packaging for Knob Creek bourbon, still feels fresh 15 years later.

SECOND BIG BREAK
I moved to San Francisco, and started working with Chuck McBride (now North American creative director for Chiat Day), at Foote, Cone & Belding. He was an inspiring advertising creative director, which surprised me. I used to think advertising people had the creativity knocked out of them by the time they were 30. A writer and a big thinker, he brought creative integrity to the work. His gifts for storytelling complemented my team’s passion for design and visual culture, with the result that our work for Levi’s was disgustingly successful. After three happy years there, another good mentor hunted me down.

THIRD BIG BREAK
Rick Boyko, chief creative o¡Öcer and co-president of Ogilvy & Mather, called to ask if I wanted to work on Hershey’s, IBM, Jaguar, Amex, Kodak, and Mattel, instead of just Levi’s. He offered me much more than the opportunity to start a typical orphan design group in an ad agency. Rick gave design a big place at the table by making me an executive creative director for the agency.

Rick was an articulate, relentless advocate for the role of design in all of the agency’s work, insisting that design be involved in everything Ogilvy does from the beginning. He marched my team out in front all the time. And, like a good mentor, he tried to align his vision with ours, so that our hopes became his hopes.

When Rick left to lead the Virginia Commonwealth University Adcenter, the new CCOs, Chris Wall and Dave Apicella, along with agency president Bill Gray, became advocates for design as well. Their agenda is to inspire us to try new things and do our best work. They support the role that design thinking can play in every aspect of our clients’ businesses and have given our growing team more places at the table. I cannot emphasize enough how rare this is.

COCA-COLA identity development. TEAM: Leigh Okies, David Israel, Collins.

A MENTOR IN TURN
Now it’s my turn. When I’m looking for talent, I seek mavericks. Genuinely creative, extraordinary people who could have been anything—painters, architects, poets—but who have chosen design as their vehicle for expression. It’s very, very hard to get a job in my group, and working here is not for everyone. We run a design boot camp. We demand hard work, constant learning, and constant invention. We expect our people to challenge everything, especially themselves.

But most of all, I demand that our designers refuse to apologize for being creative people in a world that’s eager to commoditize and diminish them. Never say you’re sorry for your gifts. The world needs them.

And that’s good advice for anyone.