‘Get their voice out there’: How one agency entrepreneur created opportunities for other women and people of color

All of our projects have a digital output and a social component. We’re thinking through their digital marketing website, their landing pages, and we’re also thinking about their social content. So all of our clients that we do brand work for, we actually refresh all of their social channels as well. Because social is one of the biggest touchpoints for brands. 

I think traditionally branding agencies have been very focused on their logo and a brand book. But the reality is that if a client doesn’t have the tools or capabilities in-house to really blow out that brand book, a brand book doesn’t really become very useful. To show the elasticity of a brand through social or digital, has become actually a really big selling point for us with clients because we’re able to say, ‘Here’s assets that you can actually turn on tomorrow. And let’s also use digital as a place for us to get feedback from people and iterate on your brand.’ And so sometimes we’ll launch a brand completely using digital as an output, and then continue to iterate and refine the brand based on what’s working.

What have you done to foster better opportunities for other women looking to get into the field? 

I started the company when I did because thinking about inclusion and supporting women and minority founders become more relevant than ever. It feels very serendipitous in some ways, too, because since I started, all of our growth since has been [from] female founders and female-led companies and organizations that have organically spread the word about my company, about my services and about our offering. Very early on, I looked at the branding landscape particularly in New York and realized there’s actually a lack of agencies that are 1. led by women, and 2. led by a founder of color. And as I started networking and getting introduced to people through VCs or through clients, I realized that more and more of these founders and women wanted to work with a company that was led this way. They want to work with a values-led organization, a company that immediately had an understanding of who they were, who their demographic was, who their audience that they were reaching out to was. That’s just naturally happened, where we’ve built a very diverse and values-led organization. So much to the point now, where over half our team is identified as a person of color or identifies as a woman.

Would you say that those efforts have translated into being more on the radar of minority- or women-led brands?

I like to think that it does. And that those referrals, that network and community that we found, has really responded. But we also created something that we call TWA Labs, which essentially is a subsidized offering of what we currently offer to clients. It’s a $10K branding package that essentially helps a founder from start to fundraising. And we have helped about 20 companies raise almost $20 million. So it’s been something that we’ve been able to help a lot of founders in a very significant real tangible way: raise a lot of money, and get their message and brand out there. That’s something I’m super proud of because our whole idea is to just try to help and support more female founders, more minority founders, get their voice out there. One of the ones that’s really well known is Sanzo. It’s Asian sparkling water. We helped incubate that brand with 24-Hour Assembly. And he recently raised like $1.3 million in fundraising.