Brooke Ivey, the Chief Sales Officer for a niche company in Jacksonville, FL that provides services to insurance companies, embraces the creativity she has cultivated her entire life. Her family has provided a multitude of examples for applying creativity—from vaudevillian grandparents, a trial attorney father with a job that necessitated publicly standing in front of people and delivering important concepts, and mother who was a 2nd grade teacher and elementary school principal, to her creatively inspiring husband and young daughter.

 

Proclaiming that everything she does is either telling stories or listening to people, Brooke understands the value and applies those skills to her job:

 

“Instead of just saying, ‘How do we find people who want to buy this product? [and] How do we find people who want to buy this service?’ (certainly the foundation of any sale)… We try to go beyond that though and say, ‘What are the problems out there that people have that we can solve? What needs are there in the market that we can solve? How do we become partners to people?’ and that’s, I think, really where business and creativity really meet oftentimes.”

 

She shares an encouraging outlook, not only in the positive and supportive way she is a leader, but also how she views changes in her industry:

 

“We seem to have come to an era of understanding where there is not only a willingness to say we value everyone’s voice, but to say in valuing everyone’s voice we have an obligation to make sure that voice is heard—not just to invite people to speak up and be a part of the conversation, but to make sure that they really are a part of the conversation and that’s really exciting to see for me.”