Leading with the heart for successful creative strategies | Perspectives with Nadine Ridder
Perspectives with Nadine Ridder | Creative strategist, writer & activist
This week’s episode sees us chat with Nadine Ridder, an independent creative strategist, writer, and workshop facilitator who raises her voice so that others can have theirs heard.
Everything Nadine does comes from her heart. With regular bylines in national newspapers, she opts to write about the things that intrinsically motivate her to speak out. Social justice, racism, the environment, and activism are all topics she was covering long before they became ‘trendy’, and now that the rest of the world has caught up, her writing and strategy work have organically come together in a way that’s allowed her to make the biggest impact - although this isn’t always necessarily the intention. Nadine shares that, when it comes to her writing:
“I’m never doing that thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to make an impact’- it’s not like that. Because a lot of the writing comes from the feeling of injustice as well, that I feel like, ‘Oh, people are looking at this, but they’re not seeing it.”
Battling injustice has been a driving force in Nadine’s professional life, and her role as a trainer and extensive history as a strategist has allowed her to open the eyes of many to the way she sees the world. She is always trying to get others to consider life from another’s perspective - something she pins down to her own mixed cultural background and inherent inclusive mindset.
As we talk, she mentions how aware she is of her own privilege, and where she is able to utilise this to enact change:
“Instead of focusing on the negative, I try to focus on the positive, because if you see your privileges, then you could also see where your opportunity lies to help others.”
Nadine has channelled this sensitivity to her own power and the power of others into speaking up for what she believes in since childhood. It is this kind of awareness and willingness to act that sees her confront the hegemonic order and individuals who blindly cling to their privilege:
“I always say, the guys that were bullying back then, they’re still the same guys that I’m arguing with right now. And these are basically the guys that are leading most companies.”
Nadine is an astute cultural commentator and chameleon whose ability to see things from multiple perspectives is an asset to any campaign she works on - something we know from experience!
Discover her full story here.