Jenny joined the Creative Niche team in November of 2007 after working with a Canadian retailer. There, she handled media buying and the planning of major national advertising promotions. Prior to that, on the agency side, Jenny was an account manager for client services with one of Canada's largest fashion retailers.

Jenny has a wealth of education: she earned a French certificate in Marseille, France, studied business marketing at Ryerson University, and learned Web page design and HTML at George Brown College.

And it doesn't stop there: Jenny considers continuing education to be essential to her own career path. She's taken courses in advertising fundamentals with The Association of Canadian Advertisers, and acquired corporate training in project management, group facilitation, public speaking and presentation skills.

When she's not travelling or spending time with her proudest achievements--her two daughters--Jenny spends her free time with a camera in hand or participating in Bikram yoga. She's a published photographer, who counts Annie Lebowitz among her influences.

What else gets Jenny excited? People--and the technologies that connect them.

"I'm a tech junkie," she confesses, "whether we're talking about devices or platforms. I'm fascinated by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, mobile phones and apps.

"I think the changing landscape of media is super-exciting. There are so many new communications channels we can listen to and be heard through. They bring us closer to shared interest groups around the world."

Although Debra began her career working in corporate environments, the roles she's filled have always incorporated an aspect of creative. For instance, she's been involved in event management as well as in the branding and the design of corporate communications. She also served as a project and account manager for a design agency. It was then, she says, that she discovered being involved with creative was a part of her DNA.

This insight led her join a large global staffing agency that represented graphic designers, print production specialists, Web designers and developers, and account support personnel in 1997. It was there that she discovered her other great strength: an entrepreneurial instinct that could help companies build their businesses of their own.

Debra brought all of this expertise to Creative Niche when she joined in April of 2005. Now, she consistently secures successful placements, due to her strong client relationship skills, eye for finding rare talent, and knack for matching that talent with environments in which they can flourish.

Debra's recruitment philosophy can best be described as "fit placement" rather than "talent placement." At any given time, she has an active roster of talent that she hopes to match with the right opportunity. She's continually on the lookout for undervalued, high-quality candidates who have the potential to be graphics arts and marcom stars of the future.

Debra's also committed to keeping her skills--if you'll pardon the expression--"sharp." Her education didn't end when she graduated with honours in marketing from Seneca College. She continues to attend conferences and seminars on topics like marketing, client development and negotiating.

In her spare time, Debra enjoys cooking, gardening and the peace of her backyard. She draws inspiration from many individuals, including author Robertson Davies and Nova Scotian painter Maud Lewis.

"She was an artist who was able to capture the simplest beauty in her paintings, despite the fact that she suffered from severe physical deformities," Debra explains. "From the one-room cabin she shared with her husband, Maud depicted the beauty that can be found in the simple joy of the everyday. That's something I can definitely relate to."

Stacy has a unique ability to match highly-skilled creative professionals with their dream jobs, while introducing dynamic companies to the talent they need to succeed. In fact, the long-time recruiter admits that even when she’s not at work, she inadvertently finds herself quizzing people about their career objectives, talents and skills, then thinking about potential job matches.

It’s that sort of passion that the Cincinnati-based relationship manager brought to Creative Niche when she joined the company in June, 2012. Boasting nearly a decade of recruitment experience working for staffing agencies and then on the client side at a prominent digital agency, Stacy spent the past five years in a prominent position at Possible Worldwide, a division of the global marketing-communications giant WPP. During her tenure at Possible Worldwide, Stacy was responsible for recruiting junior-to-senior-level digital creative professionals, along with account and project managers, performance marketers and web analytics professionals.

It goes without saying that Stacy brought a wealth of creative industry recruitment experience to Creative Niche and was excited by the opportunity to apply her client-talent matching skills on a wider stage. As the firm’s lead relationship manager for the U.S., she’s tasked with finding the best creative talent the country has to offer, then uniting those professionals with Creative Niche’s dynamic nationwide pool of clients.

And when she’s not enjoying the most challenging aspects of her position, Stacy loves spending time with her husband, two chocolate labs, playing poker or gardening.

When Craig join Creative Niche in 2007, he brought with him 12 years of agency and client-side experience working with Tier-1 brands. Having risen from account executive through to account director, Craig's developed an ingrained business expertise. And, with a BA in administrative and commercial studies from the University of Western Ontario, a strong understanding of brand goals and a proven track record with major retailers, he offers Creative Niche clients exceptional dedication to customer service and talent-assessment skills.

In addition to travelling, reading biographies, and spending time with friends and family, Craig's enjoys exploring Toronto neighbourhoods on foot. Could that be why "good shoes" shows up on his list of guilty pleasures?

When looking at the future of our industry, Craig is excited by how social media has introduced a sense of play into commerce. "The message seems to be, 'If your brand is fun to play with and fits nicely with me in my world, I'll reward you by trying it,'" he says. "If it lives up to its claims, I'll not only demonstrate brand loyalty but I'll be an active brand advocate.

"Conversely," he warns, "I'm just as likely to spread the word about how a brand failed me."

With her innate people skills, irrepressible enthusiasm and a can-do attitude that just won't quit, Jayla's a natural fit at Creative Niche. She came on board in 2007, after pioneering and writing a teen-focused page for the Sarnia, Ontario, daily The Observer.

Jayla's studies in broadcast journalism at Mohawk College gave her a solid grounding in media. She's still fascinated in the ever-changing mediascape, and in how quickly people respond to online videos, tweets and blog posts.

"Marketers have an upper hand," she observes. "Social media can be a wonderful way to source target markets, conduct research and create brand awareness by word of mouth."

In her personal life, Jayla is inspired by artists ranging from Sabrina Ward Harrison to Augusten Burroughs. Ask her about favourite tunes, though, and she's stumped.

"That's a really tough question, because music is one of things I love most in life," she says. "I especially love live music, and music played by friends. Neil Young is another of my favourite musicians--I grew up listening to it. But I also like performers from other eras, like Nina Simone, James Brown and indie rockers The National."

Jayla has the same problem when it comes to food. "My favourite food? That's like asking a mother to pick her favourite child!" she laughs. That said, these days she's leaning towards Korean bibimbap and margaritas. Not necessarily, she points out, at the same time.