Today we’d like to introduce you to Jolene Delisle.
Hi Jolene, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was adopted from South Korea and came to the U.S. when I was around 6 years old. I didn’t speak English, so before I really had words, I had art. Drawing became my way of communicating and connecting with people. I don’t think I understood it that way at the time, but looking back, it makes a lot of sense that I ended up building a career around ideas and storytelling.
I started out in design and branding and spent my earliest years learning the business through the world of Advertising, working with really talented people, and figuring out what kind of creative work I cared about. Eventually, my partner Lawrence and I started The Working Assembly. We wanted to build the kind of agency we wanted to work at, one that was ambitious and creative but also human. We started small, and over time we’ve had the chance to work with incredible founders, companies, and brands at very different stages of their lives.
I’ve also realized that I really love building things, not just brands. So when the opportunity came to purchase an old roadside stand in the Hudson Valley, it became a completely different creative outlet for us. It’s food, retail, hospitality, community, branding, all wrapped into one place. There’s something incredibly satisfying about taking everything I’ve learned in my career and applying it to something where you can actually watch people walk through the door and experience it.
My career probably makes more sense to me now than it did while I was living it. The thread through all of it is that I’ve always been interested in why people care about certain things, what makes them feel something, and how a story or an idea can bring people together. That started for me long before I knew you could make a career out of it.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think from the outside, careers can look much more intentional than they actually feel while you’re living them. You see where someone ended up, and it’s easy to connect all the dots backward, but in the moment, you’re mostly just making the best decision you can with what you know.
Starting The Working Assembly brought a completely different set of challenges I was not prepared for. When it’s your company, you’re responsible for everything: the work, the people, the culture, the clients, and whether there’s enough money to keep doing it all. There isn’t really a handbook for that. You can be having the best year creatively and still be worried about the business. You can win an incredible client and immediately start thinking about how you’re going to deliver on what you promised. Every exciting thing seems to come with a new thing to worry about. And Lawrence and I were building a family at the same time we were building the business. There were years when everything felt like it was happening at once. We were growing a company, raising very young kids, trying to be good partners, good parents, good leaders, and somehow still have something left for ourselves. I don’t think we always got the balance right. I’m not even sure I believe in balance anymore. There are periods when work needs more from you and periods when your family does. I’ve gotten much better at accepting that.
I’ve also learned that growth isn’t always about doing more. Sometimes it’s saying no to something that looks great on paper. Sometimes it’s admitting you made the wrong call. Sometimes it’s realizing that the way you ran the company two years ago isn’t the way you should run it today. That constant evolution can be uncomfortable, but I think it’s also what keeps me interested. I don’t think the challenges ever really disappear. You just become more comfortable with uncertainty. I’m much more willing now to trust my instincts, say what I think, take the risk, and accept that sometimes I’m going to get it wrong. I used to think confidence meant knowing exactly what to do. Now I think it’s knowing that you’ll figure it out when you don’t.
As you know, we’re big fans of The Working Asssembly. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
The Working Assembly is a branding and creative agency in New York. What I like to say is that we really help companies figure out why people should care about them. I’m most interested in the moments when the answer isn’t obvious. A company might have an amazing product but no real story around it. Or it’s grown so much that the brand no longer reflects what the business has become. Sometimes it’s a company that everyone knows, but people have stopped paying attention. Those are fun problems to solve because there’s usually something really good hiding in there. You just have to find it.
We’re not interested in making something different just for the sake of being different, but I do think the best ideas usually have a little tension in them. If everyone in the room immediately agrees with everything, it’s probably not interesting enough yet. And I’m proud that our work doesn’t all look the same. We want the work to feel surprising at first and completely obvious once you see it. At its best, branding can do much more than make something look better. It can make people reconsider a company they thought they knew, or make a new idea feel inevitable. It can even change the way an entire category behaves. That’s the work I get excited about.
How do you think about luck?
I think about luck a lot. I was incredibly lucky to be adopted and to end up with the family I did. That one twist of fate shaped everything that came after it, where I grew up, the opportunities I had, the people I met, and ultimately the person I became.
I also feel incredibly lucky to have found my husband, Lawrence. Having someone in your life who really believes in you changes what you think is possible for yourself. It makes you a little braver. You try things you might have talked yourself out of, you take bigger risks, you push yourself further because you know there’s someone beside you saying, “Why not?” I think we’ve done that for each other throughout our lives together.
But I also really believe you create some of your own luck. You have to work hard, put yourself in the room, raise your hand, and try things. I’ve always been someone who would rather go after an opportunity than decide for myself that I’m not going to get it. Take the meeting. Go to the event where you don’t know anyone. Try for the thing that feels slightly out of reach. You never know which one is going to change the course of your life.
I’ve had a lot of luck in my life but I think the other half is being willing to do something with it. You have to meet luck halfway.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://theworkingassembly.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jolenedelisle
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jolened
- Other: https://www.cherriesroadside.com
