Rachel Gogel has spent the last 16 years building creative teams from the ground up. She took on her first associate art director role aged just 23 at GQ, where she headed up a team of creatives who were all older than her as the publication sought to expand its digital offering. A couple of years later, she was brought on to establish the creative team for the New York Times’ first-ever branded content division, T Brand Studio. And as head of creative for the Facebook app, she curated an in-house team of over 30 people responsible for unifying the brand’s in-product visual systems.

“In all of those dynamics, I would break down the walls between teams or organisations that historically had been there – ask questions, understand what they did, and what their priorities were,” says Gogel. “There was a lot of empathy building and speaking their language, and then finding ways to involve them in the process. So even though I wasn’t doing this consciously, I’ve always been interested in organisational design and culture.”

Today, the San Francisco-based creative director runs her own consultancy informed by her experiences both in-house and agency side. But since going independent during the pandemic, she’s increasingly realised that her happy place is playing the role of a fractional design leader. If you’re new to that term, it isn’t defined as your typical freelancer or consultant. Instead, it’s a flexible model where businesses engage seasoned professionals to come in at a very high level for a fraction of the time, whether it’s a couple of days a week or on a per project basis. Already fairly common practice in the executive and marketing worlds, the model is becoming increasingly recognised within the creative industries too.