Newsletter
Events
Duncan Channon's Jessea Hankins on Finding the Human Story in the Creative Work
Plus: Her YA novel-writing adventures under the name Avery Williams
Jessea is currently ECD at Duncan Channon. Her decades-long career includes stints at Wieden+Kennedy and Bartle Bogle Hegarty. Clients include Sephora, Kettle Chips, the United Nations, Kona Big Wave, Horizon Organic and the Calif. Department of Public Health.
We spent two minutes with Jesse to learn more about her background, her creative inspirations and recent work she’s admired.
Jessea, tell us…
Where you grew up, and where you live now.
My dad was a radio DJ, so I grew up as a “radio brat,” traipsing all over the country. We moved 11 times before I graduated high school, bouncing from Los Angeles and Seattle to Detroit and back again. If you add up all the years, I’ve spent the most time in California, but I don’t really have a hometown.
I was always the new kid in school, missing the place we just left. It also turned me into a person who was basically yearning all the time, which is probably how I became a poet.
These days I live in Portland, Ore., with my husband, kids and our exceedingly fluffy kitten Avalanche.
A moment from high school or college that changed your life.
I went to UC Santa Cruz, wrote a lot of poetry, wandered around in the forest searching for fairies and desperately hoping magic was real.
The thing that actually changed the course of my life was a temp agency. Shortly after graduation, I moved to Portland and signed up with one. They sent me to do admin work in the finance department of a company I’d never heard of called Wieden+Kennedy.
A book, movie, TV show or podcast you recently found inspiring.
Movie: Project Hail Mary. But the work I’ve found the most creatively exciting lately is Jacqueline Novak’s comedy special Get on Your Knees. I love watching her mind at work, how she drops little breadcrumbs then circles back many turns later to pay them off. It’s obsessive, literary, twisty, manic and hilarious.
A recent project you’re proud of.
I’m especially proud of “Girlhood,” a pro-bono campaign we created for the SHERO Foundation to fight sex trafficking and support survivors. It was such a heavy topic and a thorny creative challenge. We needed people to understand the reality of trafficking without reducing survivors to their trauma or leaving viewers in despair. So instead of focusing on the crime itself, we focused on the loss of ordinary girlhood—friendships, sleepovers, crushes, all those moments every kid deserves to experience in safety.
Your main strength as a creative person.
I’m exceptionally dogged at getting to the heart of the matter, whether that’s in a creative brief or understanding client feedback. I cannot do creative work unless I feel the human story. I’ll happily drag my beloved colleagues with me into the maelstrom of endless questions about why something matters and why anyone cares until we get to a place that’s emotionally honest.
Your biggest weakness.
I get very attached to creative ideas. I’ve been in this business long enough to know that great work gets killed more often than it gets made.
Tell us about your novel writing adventures as Avery Williams.
I considered myself a serious poet, and wanted to keep my commercial YA fiction work separate from the Serious stuff, like when Anne Rice wrote smut under a nom de plume. However, we live in a world with the internet and that was a silly idea.
The books follow Seraphina, a 600-year-old girl who can move her soul from body to body and has been doing so since the Black Plague. Like me, she desperately wants to believe in something more than this earth, but her ability is explained through the quasi-scientific language of alchemy. They take place in the modern Bay Area, where Seraphina is trying to escape a controlling fellow body-mover who could be inhabiting literally anyone. Thrillers!
I have more novels in me. They’ll erupt someday.
2 Minutes With is our regular interview series where we chat with creatives about their backgrounds, creative inspirations, work they admire and more. For more about 2 Minutes With, or to be considered for the series, please get in touch.
