Next Creative Leaders 2021

By The 3% Conference & The One Club for Creativity on Nov 02, 2021

As we announce this year’s seventh annual Next Creative Leaders class, we’re celebrating a big milestone: we’ve now named over 100 women and non-binary creatives “Next Creative Leaders.” After adding our 2021 top 10 winners and 20 regional winners, we’re at a stunning 110 modern leaders around the world, who are actively changing the face of creativity.

In our second year of honoring regional winners, we have our most geographically diverse group yet. But even our top 10 class offers a uniquely global point-of-view with winners from Brazil, England, New Zealand, Turkey, Spain, and the United States. In what feels like a tangible shift to modern creativity, we have our first ever winner from TikTok. And, our second ever winning creative team is currently navigating a long distance partnership.

Collectively, our winners have lent their creativity to raising awareness around the health of our beaches and oceans, championing freedom of the press, fighting internet scammers, and centering underrepresented creatives, fans, and athletes. The second year of this global pandemic has us living at work, feeling overstimulated, and under-connected. This class of Next Creative Leaders are focused on caring for their own mental health and rebuilding an industry where balance is more central to our business.

As we look back on the past seven years, to acknowledge just how much has changed, it’s important to be honest about how far we still have to go. But if this year’s Next Creative Leaders class is any indication of where our industry is heading, we can be sure that our future is more inclusive, more representative, more empathetic, and infinitely more creative than we could have ever imagined.

Article and interviews by Laurel Stark Akman, Next Creative Leaders Co-Founder and Creative Director.

2021 branding by Elma Karabegovic, 2020 Next Creative Leaders winner and Associate Creative Director at Broken Heart Love Affair.


Top 10 Winners

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REGIONAL WINNERS

---Click any headshot to view their winning work---


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