Running the creative department for the custom content division of a world-class media company requires ideas—an endless stream of them, coming from all corners of the organization. That’s why, says Sydney Levin-Antonelli, director of creative at The New York Times Co.’s T Brand Studio, “We only sit at tables big enough for everyone.”
“Everyone” is a growing team of 70-plus, including editors, writers, designers, photographers, videographers, podcasters and event producers, so those “tables” are figurative—and in the pandemic era, of course, virtual.
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Levin-Antonelli, 34, a Boston University journalism major who did stints at The Huffington Post as a writer and at AOL helping to lead video programming, says that keeping morale up among creatives—especially creatives working remotely—involves, more than anything else, listening. “If you’re not listening to everyone,” she says, “you’re not listening to anyone. We believe in amplifying each voice, hearing every perspective and reflecting the world in our work.”
Over the past year, that work has included a print/digital campaign for Dropbox highlighting dozens of small businesses that launched during the pandemic—a reminder, Levin-Antonelli says, “that there is truly no deferring a dream”—and a series of nonfiction essays commissioned from culinary and literary luminaries for Visit Florida.
The common thread across those and other T Brand projects is always, she says, “the power of stories.”