Madonna Badger is the founder and chief creative officer of Badger & Winters, the agency behind the Women Not Objects campaign, No Kids in Cages and Olay’s 2020 Super Bowl ad.

In 2011, her three children and her parents were killed in a fire on Christmas Day. Badger escaped by crawling out a window, clad only in her pajamas. Now, as the country faces 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, she talks about dealing with grief, both personal and public, on this episode of the “Ad Block” podcast.

“I had to find a purpose,” she says of eventually returning to work at her agency. “I knew I couldn’t do this just to sell something.”

Badger also weighs in on the power of names, the importance of mental health support systems and the benefits of occasional escapism into fantasy worlds.