The Honor is Mine
From one of my favorite collaborators, Steph Lanning…
First of all, what an honor to be able to hand out this award - and even more of an honor to give this award to this person.
A really great part of my role at Instrument is that I get to spend a lot of time talking about our company - what makes it special, what makes it unique, and what we value as an organization. And sometimes, for RFPs, or for procurement processes, or for awards, I get to write about it, too.
You may have seen that we were recently recognized by Fast Company as one of the top workplaces for innovation, and particularly, for women in innovation. As part of that process, we on the BaM team got to write about our company, and particularly relevant for today, about our company’s leadership.
Now, I know that usually the reveal is a surprise that we leave until the end of the speech, but for today, I’d like to spotlight the winner of this award - truly the person who has had the most impact on our business from DAY ONE - and that person is one of our founders and former CEO, Justin Lewis.
If you’ll all give me the time, I’d like to read what I wrote about Justin when we submitted for that award at the beginning of this year.
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From the earliest days of our company, Justin has led by lifting up others, and fostering a culture of growth through innovation. Not just in our client work, but in how we run a business, how we build our partnerships, and how an employer can show up for their employees.
Justin has architected our unique agency team model, with the goal to grow the next generation of leaders at our company with a level of autonomy that I’ve never encountered before at another agency. He guides initiatives with a gentle hand, allowing for others to have ownership of the work to be done - while still setting aspirational visions for us to attain.
He provides support at any level required within our teams (including acting as an individual contributor to the work), while also guiding the agency to stay on the leading edge of technologies that we build, how we create our work, and consistently encouraging us to push our work outside of the expected. His masterful understanding of how to build and grow businesses are invaluable to how we show up with empathy, understanding, and expertise for our clients to push our work past their expectations.
Justin models openness and transparency at an unparalleled level. He makes time to connect with anyone at our company and he will respond to every question with an honest answer. He’s receptive to feedback around how we need to structure our work and company to provide a better employee experience, or drive our work forward. He cares about the ideas and thoughts of individuals in any role at Instrument - and has a complete open door policy. His desire to always improve and innovate ladders up to himself, and how he grows as a leader.
Justin pushes us to be better by doing our best work and being the best to work with. He’s ensured that we’re financially stable through hard times and good, and showing up the best when the times are the hardest. He has dedicated his career to building an agency that creates incredible and meaningful work - that truly cares about how we do it, and the people who make it. Justin Lewis is someone that I’m proud to work for every day.
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Thank you Justin, for building Instrument into what it is today. For putting people at the center of every decision you’ve made over the last 17 years. And for being our forever MVP - I’m proud to give you the cup of ho for (i think!) the first time. Also, please join us at Justin’s clapout on Friday to hear from more folks about the impact that Justin has had - We miss you already.