Dig Your Heels In: A Working Woman’s Series with Jolene Delisle

A captivating story is often vital in building a successful business. Jolene Delisle, Founder and Head Creative at The Working Assembly, a branding and creative industry for clients at various life stages, recognized the need for brands to refine, synthesize, and market themselves throughout their life cycles using storytelling. Delisle sits down with host Gabrielle Bejarano to remark on her journey as a woman founder in the branding industry.

“Advertising was really the place where storytellers go,” remarked Delisle, noting that her time in advertising helped push her to find her LLC and start consulting one-on-one with other female founders.

During the “silicon-alley” movement in NYC, which saw the rise of many start-ups, “There were a lot of female founders coming out who didn’t necessarily have that support or that infrastructure of a branding agency, they couldn’t really fully support that financially. And so, I was able to kind of consult with some of those founders and work with them directly and I realized it was so positive, such a positive experience,” said Delisle.

While pregnant with her daughter, Delisle made The Working Assembly a full-time gig.

Delisle wanted to make sure her company could reach and support the smaller start-ups and clients, “We’re able to really support our clients in a way that feels agile, it feels, you know, not rigid, we’re really augmenting to them and their process and their team. But we’re also able to supply a lot of diversity of thought.”

The Working Assembly brought a new outlook to the industry, “So I thought: How cool would it be if we had a branding agency that could, you know, at least help with the initial launch and campaign aspects?…” remarked Delisle.

With the most recent data from Zippia showing nearly 64% of men are Creative Directors while only 35% are women, Delisle noted that her workers do interact with her a bit differently than her male counterpart, but, “It’s just something that we, as a society, are starting to really kind of reconcile and understand now…”