Jess Lilley, Founder of The Open Arms and Psychologist, Ash King
Special guests, Jess Lilley of The Open Arms (Ex- Leo Burnett) and Psychologist Ash King join us for our latest event. Asking For A Friend teams an industry leader with a psychologist to give advice on career, mental health and everything in between. It’s there for the questions you don’t yet have the courage to ask of your boss or at your workplace for fear of how you may be judged or treated. Of course, we hope you can ask those questions, but just in case, you can ask them anonymously for a friend instead.
Jess is a Creative Director and Founder of The Open Arms in Melbourne. She’s been doing the ad thing pretty solidly since 2000 - when she was listening to a lot of big riffs and working for peanuts in the independent music industry. But as fate would have it, Jess took a one-off freelance copywriting gig “to make ends meet" and thus began a globetrotting journey revelling in the pirateship-like camaraderie, inventiveness, occasional weirdness and always team spiritedness of creative departments in cities near and far. Throughout her career, Jess has continued to balance work with personal creative projects across public radio, photography, film and theatre.
Ash King is a psychologist, writer/designer & cyberpsychology researcher at the University of Sydney. After her life in the music industry came to a halt following a vocal injury, she’s now using psychology & mindfulness to help folks live their best lives with creativity, passion and purpose. She has worked across a range of creative fields, including film & tv, live music, visual arts and radio, and run workshops and talks for Amazon, Pinterest, Linktree, Pedestrian TV, APRA/AMCOS and BigSound. She believes that learning to manage the mind can be a fun and inquisitive process. Through insight, wisdom and a splash of pop culture, she helps individuals & organisations develop practical skills to go deep, get wise, and be happy.
