Hi, I'm Jody Laybourne. I'm a graphic designer and veteran of 20 years in the trenches of media agency pitches. I joined Initiative in 2004, fresh off a plane from Australia, knowing nothing about media and probably not that much about design either. As the senior designer was leaving just as I started, my fellow junior colleague and I were dropped right in the deep end.

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But the great thing about learning everything the hard way is that all those lessons stick. I became adaptable, versatile, resilient, inventive, creative, solutions-focused, calm under the pressures of no time or budget, great at interpreting content, great at telling stories visually, great at solving problems, great at pre-empting needs before they arose, confident speaking to people of all levels of seniority, a trusted collaborator and an empathetic leader.

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I also grew as a designer, becoming proficient in the Adobe usual suspects (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign) as well as dabbling in video. But my not-so-secret superpower is PowerPoint. I've learned this much-maligned tool for 'non-designers' is astonishingly powerful, and more versatile than many give it credit for. I have produced work using it you could have sworn were made in Adobe, yet have been accessible for anyone to edit. This open mentality is one I fostered with the design team I built and led for many years. And more recently, due to client demand, I've been skilling up in Google Slides too.

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I'm always interested in new challenges, so please get in touch if you'd like to discuss how I may be able to help.​