Unexpected. Unscripted. Unlike anything else. That’s Inside Deloitte Studios — a podcast exploring the creative minds that make up Deloitte Digital’s studio system, a global network of creative problem-solvers who tackle some of the biggest challenges in business. Hosted by Deloitte Digital’s Chief Design Officer Nelson Kunkel, the series unpacks how our studios work, the people that make it all happen, and the wonder that is our creative business.
This week’s episode of Inside Deloitte Studios is our season 6 finale, and in true IDS fashion, we are going out with a bang! Tune in to listen to the adventures of Studio Lead/Content Strategy Director Rachel Whitt—which include starting a men’s underwear brand, traveling the globe as a kid and with her kids in the future, and finding passions in creative problem solving in and out of the workplace.
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This week’s guest—Kaitlyn Kuzcer, Digital Reality Manager—went from flying stand-by across the globe with her Air Force pilot parents to, mid-college, switching her intended career path from becoming a doctorto trailblazing the future of engagement with virtual and augmented reality technology. Nelson and Kaitlyn talk about Colorado outdoor adventure life, martial arts, and the drive to discover the most innovative digital reality creative solutions this high-flying episode you won’t want to miss!
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Let’s connect the dots. What do innovative digital user design, marathon running, traditional Wing Chun Kung Fu, and lightsaber/beehive/dirtball building all have in common? They are just a few aspects of the life and creative journey of IDS’s guest this week, Creative Director Fritz Duggan. Tune in for this episode filled with inspiration in unexpected places and empathetic thinking to make impactful design.
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From a young age, dreaming first about being the English teacher causing a “Dead Poets Society-esque” fury of passion in classrooms, this week’s guest, Nathan Young—Head of Content Strategy and Deloitte Digital’s Ethos—has been passionately focused on living authentically and working with empathy ever since he was a kid. Catch this episode filled with stories of how Nathan went from sitting on production with his dad to climbing the ranks of the advertising world and finally spearheading the future of purposeful strategy to create impactful change in the world.
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Our guest this week, Studio Content Lead Jenny Kelly, now spearheads content and user strategy here at Deloitte Digital. Her journey to trailblazing the conversation about the complexity of content is filled with some non-traditional adventures, which include growing up the daughter of a world-renowned poultry expert, living in small German and Dutch towns, vying for a spot in the CIA, restaurant owning, and being a local Seattle activist. You won’t want to miss this episode about the nuances of creativity, content, and life lessons learned in the most unlikely of places.
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Where did you grow up? | 03:22.9
Family life discussion. | 04:54.3
Trying out for the police force. | 10:46.5
Interested in behavioral science from an early age. | 16:13.2
How did you transistion into the mareting field? | 19:30.3
Tell me about your au pair experience. | 20:35.2
What fuels you to be part of so many different things? | 25:21.8
How did you get started in those Seattle activist groups? | 27:14.0
Discussion on family values and Jenny's activist daughter. | 33:07.0
Jenny's restruant ownership experience. | 38:20.7
Discussion on experiences in the digital age. | 44:04.6
Learning and growing from experiences. | 47:59.2
Nelson's two questions. | 53:58.2
This week’s guest, a Global Creative Brand and Advertising Lead for Deloitte Digital Adrian Mills, to thank for working on the jingle (originally created as an advertisement for Melbourne Metro Trains). Aside from leading up a train safety campaign that has generated nearly 300 million views on YouTube, Mills is a decorated advertising veteran who has spearheaded creative projects across the globe, one of which added official English dictionary word creator to his resume. Tune in to this week’s episode to hear this Aussie’s journey through the advertising ranks—which includes commiserating with Nelson about the moments when their college professors told them they should consider dropping out.
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This episode Nelson chats with Allan Cook, Deloitte Digital’s very own Brit turned Californian Director of Digital Reality. Nelson and Allan dive deep into Allan’s journey through the media and tech worlds, which feature his experiences growing up across the world, following green cards to LA (via his father and a future girlfriend), and constantly working at the forefront of technology, the internet, and discovering how we as humans interact and get the most value out of them. Tune in to catch the story of this tech wizard/creative genius’ whose career path went from first pioneering technology at one of the most prominent film and media centers in the US (a job which he found in a newspaper ad) to now innovating entire technical landscapes and experiences through virtual and augmented reality across the Deloitte Digital practice.
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This week, we’re showcasing Nelson’s conversation with South African bred creative director Matthew Price. Matthew’s journey from studying multimedia in college to leading up user-experience at Deloitte Digital is one that features a balancing act of traveling across the globe for the South African national kendo martial arts team, living and embracing South African roots and values amid constant global influence, and a burgeoning love and appreciation of the intricacies and study of purposeful and creative design. You won’t want to miss this episode filled with tales of globetrotting, creative exploration, intentionality, and how something as simple a cup of coffee can tell a far greater story about culture, life, and how we view it.
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Wrapping our 5th Season of Inside Deloitte Studios on a high note, Nelson welcomes former (self-described) A/V nerd and current Experience Management National Market Offering Lead Michelle McGuire Christian to the podcast. Having come to Deloitte by way of a decade-plus career at Turner Broadcasting and CNN, Michelle offers a master class in mass communication and technology. Our stops along the way include observations about being the oldest of six siblings, ruminations on Appalachian-style clogging and hard-core cheerleading gymnastics, and an accounting of that one time she almost ran over Hollywood superstar director James Cameron — who’s directing multiple Avatar spinoffs in the soundstage adjacent to the Manhattan Beach studio — with her Prius. Cue the Titanic soundtrack.
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This week, host Nelson Kunkel welcomes the guest with the most unique title yet: Deloitte Digital’s Head of Social, Content, and Influencers. That designation goes to Kenny Gold, one of the newest members of our studio family who — in true Inside Deloitte Studios fashion — explains his role within the context of his unique life’s journey. That includes an obsession with classic SNL skits, a flirtation with a career in politics, and a moral foundation built by amazing first-generation grandparents who survived the Holocaust. With a performer’s flair, a networker’s innate ability to connect the dots, and an early-adopter’s gift for seeing digital trends long before others, Kenny is a welcome addition to our line-up. Influencers, take note.
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If you’ve always wondered what a “tomato timer” is, this is the episode for you — a whirlwind masterclass on leadership, productivity, and the art of looking good on a Zoom call. Nelson welcomes Deloitte Studios Production lead Will Rochfort, in a conversation that weaves from the role of ancient Greece in the evolution of PowerPoint to a foray into the world of competitive speaking to a deep dive into the role of creativity and storytelling in the work we do. Wall-to-wall with insights into work and life, this episode is its own TED Talk, deserving of returning to again and again for a priceless example of our studios’ thought-leadership in action.
Kicking off our second season is one of our most intimate and revealing conversations to date, with Deloitte Studios’ Head of Design Tracey Smith. Traceytakes us through an unwitting journey of self-discovery that began with what was meant to be a three-week passion-project documentary about rescue animals, a break from the grind of her former life as an advertising executive. The result, however, was a 12-year odyssey in which the power of storytelling revealed a complicated and sensitive truth about her past. This episode isn’t to be missed.
We’re excited to make your Friday especially special with this week’s podcast highlight — Nelson’s conversation with the studios’ very own patron of the arts, Global Studios Talent Model SME, Roxanne Baechler-Gill. Rox has been nurturing and building the Deloitte Digital creative community from its very inception. Having a talent leader who understands the importance of creating a space for us to thrive, to grow, and to express our authentic selves is truly our secret weapon as a creative group. Rox’s journey — which includes the many facets of exploring one’s identity, in which Herb Alpert’s pianist plays an unexpected role — offers an inspiring look at how our studio system has creativity baked into its DNA. We promise you’ll never think of human resources in quite the same way after this episode.
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This week, we’re highlighting Nelson’s conversation with Deloitte Digital’s Search Practice Leader Rivka Fogel, who built the firm’s Search practice from scratch while simultaneously becoming a mother twice in three years andsmashing through glass ceilings along the way. Like so many of our guests, Rivka’s journey to Deloitte Digital isn’t a typical one: hers involved a deep dive into the art of poetry, resulting in some strong opinions about which classic poets actually deserve the title (hint: Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are in the club; check out the episode to see who isn’t).
This week, we’re highlighting Nelson’s conversation with Brazil native Jones Krahl, who is soooo much more than his title of Executive Creative Director at DeloitteDigital. Jones is also a Latin Grammy nominee, a master at solving the Rubik’s Cube, and famously a man of few words (at least when it comes to writing copy). Why? Because he only became fluent in English after beginning work as a copywriter in the United States. That turned out to be more of an asset than a challenge because it taught him the value of economizing his words and keeping things simple, which is never as easy as it sounds. Don’t miss the story of Jones’s fascinating journey from the farms of Brazil to Deloitte Digital’s studio in New York.
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In this week’s spotlight, Nelson talks with Jesse Weed, who, early in life, either wanted to be a rock star or a graphic designer. So why not both? A musician who grew up playing in the same Seattle dive bars that made Nirvana and Pearl Jam famous, Jesse is also a self-taught designer and front-end engineer. His love of the creative arts led to his helping create award-winning apps for Target and Showtime. Bonus: Listen closely to this episode and you might just discoverNelson’s love language.
This week’s guest is a rare gem among those we’ve showcased on the podcast. While each of our past guests is uniquely creative in their own right — with backgrounds and personal journeys that are at times inspiring, unexpected, and, above all, human — Titus Parkes manages to check all those boxes and more. A former student of Printmaking and Letterpress arts who also dabbled in artistic architectural renovation of distressed post-war homes in Austin, Texas, Titus also boasts an MFA in Transmedia & Performing Arts. The ways in which that last discipline translates into the work he does for our clients as an LA-based Creative Director are impressive, but they’re nothing compared to how they’ve proven to be transformative in his private life. This episode is truly special in the intimate, personal, and vulnerable way that Titus and Nelson discuss the power of art to literally change lives for the better. This episode will make you rethink everything you know about performance — in business and in life.
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To kick off our end-of-summer season, we decided to do something special and look beyond the walls of our studio system for conversations about creativitity in business, and we’re so glad we did. None other than John Peto, the US head of Deloitte Digital, joins Nelson for a conversation that — even after all the eclectic journeys we’ve learned about this past year — still manages to impress with the sheer variety of experiences that John brings to his role. Former cattle farmer? Check. One-time commercial fisherman? Check. Past life as a gossip columnist in Hong Kong? Check. This episode is proof positive that our diverse and individually creative paths to Deloitte Digital is what makes us special — don’t miss this one.
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This week, we’ve got an episode you can’t refuse: Bryan Rokoszak, xR Design Lead and VR pioneer, dives into his conversation with Nelson by tackling one of the longest-running controversies of our time: What really happened at the end of The Sopranos finale? From there, we move from gritty reality to virtual reality, with the conversation winding its way from the many virtues of New Jersey to the punk rock scene in New York City to the frontiers of VR, including the concepts of personal space in a virtual world, teleporting across virtual distances, and avoiding the phenomenon of the uncanny valley by representing real-life people as non-people-like avatars. This is a must-listen for anyone interested in the near-future applications of virtual reality in business, defense, entertainment, and every other aspect of daily life.
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IDS pop quiz — What do the following things have in common? A stint in the U.S. Coast Guard patrolling the Bering Strait; nearly two years living in a monastery mastering the art of prolonged meditation; and unparalleled skill at telling stories through the art of illustration? Answer: They are all the experiences of Deloitte Digital illustrator extraordinaire Mark Morse, whose conversation with Nelson winds along a professional path to Deloitte that began when illustrating a collection of Zen koans for a friend’s social media project. More than a decade later, Markis elevating the stories we tell, of ourselves and of our clients, through mind-blowing illustrations. This is a conversation as unexpected as it is delightful.
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This week, we’re excited to kick off our fourth season of IDS with an in-depth (and often unexpectedly hysterical) look at where creativity intersects with sales. Todd Beilis, a Partner in Deloitte’s media and entertainment business, talks with Nelson about one of the most important things we do as a studio — support work being done throughout the firm with creativity and innovation. Todd discusses the art of developing relationships in solving our clients’ business needs; reveals his personal, business version of Ahab’s elusive White Whale; and recalls with unexpected precision the afternoon TV line-up for latchkey kids growing up in New Jersey. He also makes IDS podcast history by kicking off the show with a world-class groaner of a Dad joke.
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This week, we highlight one of our studio leaders who you might think you know because of her popular appearance as a cast member on MTV’s Road Rules — but as Holland Shand’s conversation with Nelson proves, there is always so much more to the story. General Manager of the Denver Studio, Hollandlearned early about the power of story in developing brands, both personal and professional. That appreciation taught her the value of nurturing and maintaining relationships with clients and co-workers alike. Tune in to hear a story that’s unlike any other Holland has told over the years and learn why she considers her current role to be “the honor of my life.”
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For all those creatives who miss the Nerf guns, the ping-pong tables, and the camaraderie of studio life, Virginia Magaletta speaks your love language. A designer, writer, and director, Virginia and Nelson discuss how creative play is essential for problem-solving, whether it involves opening Japanese puzzle boxes or disassembling a few Sony Walkmans over the years. “You find that the best creatives have something that is intrinsically destructive about them,” Virginia says. “They need to know how it works, so if a problem comes along, they’ll know how to solve it from scratch.”
This week, Nelson talks with author and award-winning filmmaker Greg Campbell abouthow his unlikely path to Deloitte took him through Balkan warzones, illegal Sierra Leonean diamond mines, and inside an Ocean’s 11-style heist of the most impenetrable vault in the heart of Antwerp. A storyteller, journalist, and writer of everything from screenplays to UX, Greg is a Writer/Producer for our very own Deloitte StudiosProduction group. We wonder what Hunter S. Thompson would think…
This week, tune in for Nelson Kunkel’s inspiring conversation with Ayan Pal, Chief Creative Officer and DeloitteStudio OG in Mumbai, who was taught early about the power of play and the value of seeing each individual as unique. Ayan’s path to Deloitte Digital, and the distinctive worldview he brings with him, provides unexpected insight into the people who drive creativity within our studios.