About Our Founder
Hi! Rosie, here :)
In 2008, I moved to New York and spent five years in non-traditional marketing. My bosses included Jay-Z and former record executive Steve Stoute. I launched global campaigns for Motorola, led Saatchi & Saatchi's emerging media practice, worked on award-winning work for incredible brands. I loved it. I felt like a superstar—making ridiculous money, working with brilliant people, building shit that moved culture.
In 2013, Faris (my then boyfriend) proposed with a twist: leave New York and travel the world for six months before starting our next chapter somewhere outside the USA.
We accidentally became entrepreneurs and nomads. We started our creative consultancy, Genius Steals, working with brands, agencies and organizations of all shapes and sizes to help them ignite innovation from within. We spent 11 years on the road—50+ countries, talks, workshops, helping teams innovate. Google. Coca Cola. Air New Zealand. Accenture. Gibson Guitars. (If you're interested, we've written about this here: Year One as Nomads / Why We Don't Have An Exit Strategy / Life Lessons as a Nomad / Hindsight is 2020 )
Throughout it all, we had two mantras:
1/ Make *your life* your life’s work
2/ Don’t be boring
The pandemic forced us, like almost everyone else, to pause. For the first time in a decade, we landed… in rural Tennessee at a family house. We loved the slowness, being known by neighbors.
But we missed traveling. It wasn’t until July 2023, when bought a house in Chattanooga. And it took us until January 2024 to moved. It was a compromise we made, for ourselves and each other: We were rooted, but not trapped.
In March, I took my first pottery class. I was immediately hooked. I had been wanting to take ceramics classes for years, but working with clay is slow. Like, really slow. And when you’re moving cities every two weeks, slow doesn’t really work. But I kept going, and sometimes I even liked what came out of the kiln.
I found that time spent in the pottery studio sped by. It was awful, being bad at something.
But I loved it. I found that no matter the stress of adult life, I’d feel better after spending some time getting my hands dirty. I invited (and maybe lightly peer pressured) friends to play with clay. And it turned out that these mental health benefits weren’t unique to me.
We’re all feeling it. We live in a technologically connected world, but we’re feeling more isolated than ever. We’re still surviving pandemics and politics, rising costs of living and news of turbulence around the world. And our own inner critics, which are often multiplied through social media.
And there’s a very specific thing happening as a result of this… people are hungry to make, to gather, to create – without permission slips or a business plan attached.
I hope The Rosiest Revolution will be a home for that hunger. A place to make without apologizing. To create collectively instead of competitively. To believe, like actually believe, that showing up just as you are is enough.
Want to help us grow our revolution?
Your donation helps us offer workshops to underserved communities for free.