DISRUPTIVE CREATIVITY

Disruption is the key to awareness, learning, growth, and change. Disruption creates controversy, makes us stop, pay attention, think and question the world around us.

In this next episode of Struktur Series: Disruptive Creativity, host Michelle Rose talks with two women who are disrupting their industries through their creative work: musician, composer and educator Leila Abdul-Rauf, whose solo and collaborative work in ambient music and extreme metal merges a meaningful voice with heavy topics and heavy sounds, and visual artist and creative director with culture-shifting brands, Allison Ross, whose motto is “friends don’t let friends create boring meaningless shit”.

Creatively harnessing the tool of disruption, these two bring awareness and social impact through unique storytelling, sounds, and imagery, shedding light on controversial topics like sex, death, health, mental illness, and climate change in an effort to create conversation, community, and positive change in the world. Join in as they discuss what being disruptive means to each of them and why disruption is crucial to any truly meaningful creative work.

Sponsored by CORDURA® Advanced Fabrics. Creatively disrupting the industry of performance materials.

VITAL VOICES EMERGENCY FUND FOR AFGHAN WOMEN

50% of donations for this event will go to the Vital Voices Emergency Fund For Afghan Women. Vital Voices identifies women leaders with daring vision for change, then partners with them to make that vision a reality. Please give to help and empower women leaders and change makers across the world! Donation options at registration.

https://www.vitalvoices.org/

ABOUT STRUKTUR SOCIETY

Struktur Society is a creative community for the professional growth of the artist in design, music, and modern media. Struktur highlights the importance of creativity, innovation and vision of artists to our society as we speed into the future. Our world is changing rapidly and now more than ever we need that vision to map out a path forward. Critical thinking is necessarily paired with creative thinking to foresee which directions to take. Struktur fosters this thinking while providing artists with 1) Connection: a community of support, 2) Cultivation: a place to grow, and 3) Creation: resources to develop their vision. 

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LEILA ABDUL-RAUF

Leila is a composer, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, educator and content creator based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

A co-founder of extreme metal bands Vastum, Saros, and electronic-ambient trio Ionophore, she has also been a member of progressive metal band Hammers of Misfortune and eclectic doom trio Cardinal Wyrm.

As an ambient solo artist, Leila has released four albums under her name, and has collaborated with countless others. She has toured internationally and is a private guitar and voice teacher in her (not so) spare time.

While simultaneously having worked in nonprofit administration for almost 20 years—and more recently at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California—she joined the Rocksmith Discover Team at Ubisoft in 2019 as a content writer.

Leila is also an academic at heart, having received a Master's degree in Audiology and Speech Sciences from Purdue University in 2001, with a focus on psycholinguistics and child language research.

Photo: Dawn Howard

ALLISON ROSS

Allison is a creative director and visual artist with over 15 years of experience helping brands step up and shift culture for good.

Allison spent nine years at JDK Design, starting as a designer and rocketing up to design director. While at JDK, she worked with serious culture shifters like Burton, Nike, lululemon, Seventh Generation, and Planned Parenthood.

After leaving JDK, she spent two years as the Creative Director at Nau—a brand driven by the marriage of style and substance, fashion intertwined with sustainability and soul. Because she was on the leadership and senior management teams at nau, she was able to dive deep into retail, wholesale, e-commerce, supply chain, marketing, and learn from the inside what leading a brand really means. What she learned above all else is leading a brand is no joke, but that’s no excuse to be timid or safe.

She then spent 4 years as the head of creative at BBMG, a branding and social impact studio. While at BBMG, she worked with brands like ASPCA, OceanX, Taco Bell and Estée Lauder to find new and authentic ways to communicate and operate with the health of humanity at its core.

In 2020, Allison launched the branding consultancy Yesterday, a collective of creatives and strategists challenging the old-school approach to branding. Allison’s motto is “friends don’t let friends create boring meaningless shit” which has helped her build strong relationships with the right clients, and has done a great job at keeping the less-right ones out.

Photo:  Greg Comollo