THE EGG
TALENT DEVELOPMENT + CREATIVE LEADERSHIP

Hatching
creative talent

Founder + Program Director

I founded The Egg as an experiential learning model connecting emerging creative talent with real-world work, professional mentorship, and the creative needs of a complex university ecosystem.

What began as a student creative initiative has grown into a multidisciplinary agency and talent-development program spanning design and creative strategy, multimedia, content marketing, web/UX/accessibility, and project management.

Explore The Egg
Team Portfolio

This Egg program video was filmed and produced by Egg multimedia supervisor Kirk Smith. These student testimonial videos are an ongoing project with The Egg multimedia team. 

THE OPPORTUNITY

Grow creative capacity,
not just creative work.

The challenge wasn’t simply producing more marketing materials. It was creating a structure in which students could learn by doing while contributing meaningful creative work to the university.

STUDENT DEVELOPMENT

Give emerging creatives real experience, mentorship, portfolio development, and increasing responsibility.

CREATIVE CAPACITY

Build a flexible multidisciplinary team capable of supporting Student Life, campus partners, and hundreds of student organizations.

MY ROLE

From creator to creative ecosystem builder.

As founder and program director, my role has evolved alongside The Egg—from establishing the original program model and visual materials to building the structures that allow a multidisciplinary creative community to operate and grow.

PROGRAM STRATEGY

Created and evolved the experiential-learning model, program structure, and student development framework.

CREATIVE LEADERSHIP

Set creative direction while developing structures that allow professional supervisors and emerging creatives to lead within their disciplines.

TALENT DEVELOPMENT

Built pathways connecting recruitment, training, mentorship, applied work, portfolio development, and increasing responsibility.

CREATIVE OPERATIONS

Developed workflows, roles, resources, tools, and operating practices supporting a distributed multidisciplinary team.

PARTNERSHIP + ADVOCACY

Connected students, professional staff, campus clients, academic programs like visual communications with internships, and institutional partners around a shared creative ecosystem.

Impact at a glance

student creative cohorts

Creative Disciplines

Campus Departments Served

Student Orgs Supported

Professional Supervisors

THE MODEL

One agency. Five creative disciplines.

Art + Design

creative strategy Identity · campaigns · publications · environments · visual storytelling

Multimedia

Photography · video · motion · multimedia storytelling

Social Media

Editorial · writing · social · audience engagement

Web, UX, + Accessibility

Digital experience · usability · accessibility

Project Management

Workflow · coordination ·
delivery

How creative talent hatches.

01 RECRUIT

Identify emerging talent.

02 LEARN

Build foundational skills.

03 PRACTICE

Take on real work.

04 COLLAB

Work across disciplines.

05 LEAD

Take increasing ownership.

06 FLIGHT

Leave with experience, work and relationships.

BUILDING THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Creative culture needs systems to support it.

As The Egg grew, its infrastructure grew with it. I developed and co-developed tools and experiences designed to make expectations visible, learning accessible, and professional development part of everyday creative work.

Egg Academy

LEARNING INFRASTRUCTURE

A custom learning environment connecting curated professional development, program-specific resources, and discipline-based training.
Explore Egg Academy

Path to Eggcellence

PROGRAM ARCHITECTURE

A student-facing guide translating expectations, opportunities, creative disciplines, and development pathways into a coherent experience.

Recruitment + Program Materials

CULTURE FROM THE FIRST TOUCHPOINT

From the original die-cut Egg brochure to recruitment and promotional materials, the identity made professional development feel playful, distinctive, and unmistakably Egg.

Kristine Lim and Emily Taylor, members of The Egg’s first cohort —the “Founding Chicks”—at the UD Involvement Fair in 2018.

CULTURE

The work was never
only about output.

The Egg’s personality—playful language, traditions, visual identity, mentorship, shared spaces, and a culture that encourages experimentation and a willingness to take creative risks—helps turn a collection of student jobs into a creative community.

The earliest cohorts helped establish that culture. As the program grew, students increasingly became not only contributors to the work, but contributors to what The Egg itself could become.

Here are some of the young people the whole thing was actually built for.

Adaleigh Nare and Tori Simons, members of The Egg’s most recent cohort —the next generation of “Founding Chicks”—at the UD Involvement Fair in 2025.

SHARED LEADERSHIP

Built to grow

The Egg operates through collaboration between student creatives and professional practitioners across multiple disciplines.

My role isn’t to personally direct every design. It’s to build the creative conditions, shared expectations, development pathways, and operating structures that allow supervisors and students to do excellent work together.

STUDENT CREATIVES
↕
STUDENT LEADERS
↕
PROFESSIONAL CREATIVE SUPERVISORS
↕
PROGRAM LEADERSHIP
↕
CAMPUS PARTNERS

And beneath it all:

Division of Student Life · Office of Communications & Marketing · University academic program collaborators

RECOGNITION

Award-winning work.
More importantly, award-winning people.

Egg Promotional Products

ACUI Steal This Idea
Abby Phillips

Egg Brochure

ACUI Steal This Idea
Abby Phillips

Esports Arena Wall Art

ACUI Steal This Idea
Abby Phillips

Path to Eggcellence

ACUI Steal This Idea
Abby Phillips

Finals Week Coffee

ACUI Steal This Idea
Kirk Smith

Mental Health Walk Yard Signs

ACUI Steal This Idea
Ivan Avila

Behind the Mask

ACUI Steal This Idea
Sarah Boekholder + Ashley Logue

Student Work

Involvement Fair Infographic

ACUI Steal This Idea
Sean Diffendall

Esports Website

ACUI Steal This Idea
Sean Diffendall and Abby Phillips

EVOLUTION

Still hatching.

The Egg has evolved repeatedly as the university, creative disciplines, student needs, technology, and our own understanding of experiential learning have changed.

The goal isn’t to preserve one agency model forever. In fact, the program itself is built on an actively iterative model, and just like The Egg it keeps reforming.

It’s to keep building a creative environment where students can discover what they’re capable of, professionals can share what they know, and meaningful work becomes the medium through which both happen.

Creative services for students,
by students.

Explore The Egg
View the team's work