Client Spotlight

Marissa W. Chen

is an events and hospitality professional by trade, primarily in fast-paced, mission-driven and creative fields focusing on client relations, sales and production.

Interview Date: 06/13/2022

What are the mediums you create in?

Words, communities, organic matter.

What do you say when people ask you what you do?

I wish I had a simpler, more pithy response to this question but truthfully it varies from day-to-day and context-to-context.

Here’s one: I'm an events and hospitality professional by trade, primarily in fast-paced, mission-driven and creative fields focusing on client relations, sales and production.

Here are some others: I consider myself a creative interpreter of sorts; I guide clients and teams through artistic concepts to workable solutions and actions; I organize, time keep, nudge/push interesting people doing interesting things; I engage and champion communities and their work.

What are some words that come to mind when you think about your creative style?

Quiet, cacophonous, expansive, intimate, isolating, conjugable.

What are you currently working on?

I am deeply fascinated by how different vantage points can transform the ways in which we surface and access the world.

What is a piece of advice around creative work that you call to mind often?

Creativity can take many forms.  To me, it’s first and foremost a mindset: a curiosity, a willingness for exploration, an outstretching of the mind as it charts pathways to other things (person, animal, vegetable, or mineral).  Many of my official jobs, the things I do in exchange for a salary, do not seem to be obviously creative at first glance – planning, sales, client relations – but I think it’s the lens with which a person approaches the world that determines their creativity.  Your voice is your own, your mind is your own; we all hold that power in the midst of the din.  You do not need to have a creative title or an artistic moniker to exercise it.

How long have you been working with Melissa?

Three months.

What did you come to coaching for?

I had fallen into a pattern of ineffectual habits and worn-out ways of thinking that I wanted to break free from. They were holding me back from making sense of disjointed thoughts and reconnecting with an intuition-driven way forward.

What are some ways that coaching has impacted you? 

With Melissa’s guidance, I recognized a need to cultivate a deeper, more confident, and more forgiving relationship with my own creativity. Our work together helped renew my capacity for resilience, something I had given up on (the irony!) and needed to reconnect with.

What are some ‘wins’ that you would attribute to being supported by Melissa?

While this is only one aspect, I recently accepted an exciting new position – a role that builds on my experience and strengths while taking them in an unexpected direction, with a lot of scope for the future. I found a way to be open to this and many other opportunities that came my way while I’ve been working with Melissa, as her approach helped me rethink the structures and walls I’d built up in my own narrative, strip away what was extraneous, and surface the integral underpinnings to re-lay a more coherent and sincere foundation.

What are you currently learning about yourself?

I am determined to continue my own personal creative practice, in whatever way it manifests, and feel my way through. I have always been a person-of-all-trades, someone who can make lemonade out of a car battery, and I’m learning to harness that for my own creative pursuits.

What advice would you give to others who are considering working with a creative coach?

Expect to do the work.  Be vulnerable and honest with yourself.  When it comes to coaching (or perhaps anything, really), you only get as much as, and an expression of, what you put in.  

Is there anything else you want to share? 

I love meeting and connecting with creative people doing creative things, with little agenda other than to see if and how anything I do can align with the work that they’re doing. If any of the word-spew above resonates, I’d love to chat and/or check out your work. You can drop me a line via my website or on IG anytime.

Where can we find you online?:  

In the internet ether, I can be found on LinkedIn, Instagram, and on my website.