Profession: Creative Director / Brand Strategist

Borough: Brooklyn

Connect: @heyphilchang

Tell me something about yourself that people in your chosen industry would find interesting.

Writing a social media post comparing Nike and adidas' respective approaches to brand got me more work/opportunities than anything else I've tried in the past.

Describe Nur in a 6-word story:

SVU, Turkish lessons, cats, and pastries.

Most treasured way you spent time in 2018? 

Recently, I had the opportunity to work on a pitch (which is normally the absolute, unmitigated worst) with a cohort of world-class hitters who all happen to be my best friends. It allowed me to prove something that I've known my whole career but never had the opportunity to validate. If you work with best in class talent and zero intermediaries, even the most daunting challenge becomes totally manageable and - in this instance - deliriously fun. We turned out a presentation that blew our client away, and find ourselves inspired to collaborate more extensively in the future. That's how work should be.

What advice would you give someone who's leaving NYC and moving to a new city? 

This isn't something I'm specifically telling Nur, but I think people make a lot of excuses for leaving New York because they feel like they didn't accomplish everything they set out to achieve here. What I'll say is this: a lot of us who live in New York have these open-ended expectations for our lives that have no cap or ceiling. That's unhealthy. It keeps us on this incessant hunt for the next thing, a different thing, a "better" thing. 

I'd ask that, in moving somewhere else, think about what will make you happy even if there's a hard limit to it. How much money? What kind of partner? What sort of job? How many hours? More often than not, trading one set of concentrated buildings for another configuration won't change what are actually internal problems, but doing a hard audit of the past few years to inform the next one can. 

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