Jayanta Jenkins:
How I lead, and what I value
I’m a global creative executive who builds brands, teams, and creative systems at the intersection of culture, strategy, technology, and commerce.
I do my best work inside complex organizations at moments of transformation, when teams need clearer systems, stronger ideas, and more resonant expression across the full consumer experience. My work is guided by one principle: creativity in service of business results.
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 across 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, Apple/Beats by Dre, 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, at Wieden+Kennedy and TBWA\Chiat\Day, I helped shape culture-defining work for brands including Nike and Gatorade.
I’m known for building in-house teams that operate with the ambition of a top agency and the rigor of a strategic business partner. I align creative, marketing, product, and leadership teams around a stronger role for brand, creating the clarity that helps internal teams and agency partners do their best work together. 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 lead close enough to the work to sharpen the idea and high enough above it to shape the system around it. The best measure of my work is whether the people I’ve led do the best work of their careers, and whether the organizations I’ve shaped are stronger, more focused, and more creatively ambitious than when I arrived.
I grew up in Northern Virginia, spending weekends in the Smithsonian museums, from the Hirshhorn to Air and Space to the National Gallery of Art, 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
