Jayanta Jenkins:
How I lead, and what I value
I’m a creative and brand leader who helps organizations turn creative ambition into strategic impact across culture and business.
I do my best work inside complex organizations, especially at moments of transformation, when teams need clearer systems, stronger ideas, and more resonant expression across the full consumer experience. My work sits at the intersection of brand, culture, and commerce, guided by one principle: creativity in service of business results.
Now, as Head of Creative Studio at Thumbtack, I’m focused on building brand systems that connect creative excellence to business momentum. I’m drawn to leadership that helps brands become more coherent, more culturally relevant, and more effective at every level of the business.
Over the course of my career, I’ve led creative organizations, built high-performing teams, and shaped brand expression at Starbucks, Disney, and Twitter. At Starbucks, I helped transform the Creative Studio from a service-minded function into a strategic, cross-functional partner shaping the brand across packaging, in-store, digital, and seasonal campaigns. At Disney, I unified teams across Disney Channel and National Geographic, helping build a stronger creative system in service of growth on Disney+. At Twitter, I led the company’s first global brand effort, helping define a clearer role for the brand in culture and inside the business. Earlier in my career, at Wieden+Kennedy and TBWA\Chiat\Day, I helped shape culture-defining work for brands like Nike and Gatorade. Those years grounded me in a lasting belief: when creativity is rooted in human truth and strategic discipline, it can move both culture and business.
I’m known for building in-house teams that operate with the ambition of a top agency and the precision of a strategic partner. More recently, that work has expanded to helping teams use AI in ways that amplify human judgment, scale craft, sharpen strategy, and move with greater speed and intelligence without losing the cultural insight and creative conviction that make the work matter. I align creative, marketing, product, and leadership teams around a stronger role for the brand, creating the clarity that helps internal teams and agency partners do their best work together. I lead from the front and the back: close enough to the work to sharpen the idea, far enough above it to shape the system around it.
I grew up in Northern Virginia, spending weekends at the Smithsonian and afternoons lost in PBS, music, fashion, and documentaries that made the world feel bigger than where I was. That early curiosity still shapes how I see brands, how I think about culture, and how I lead.
I’ve been recognized on Adweek’s Creative 100 and received honors from Cannes Lions, D&AD, The One Show, Clios, and the Emmys. What matters most to me is helping teams do the best work of their careers and building brands that endure.
THE PARTNERS
