Creative leadership with a commercial backbone.

I am Rire Nakpodia. For twenty-four years I have led brand and creative for category-defining retail, from editorial pages at The New York Times to a $100M+ digital commerce portfolio at The Children’s Place. I care about the same thing at every scale: work that is beautiful and work that performs. My work lives where brand storytelling meets the P&L: art direction, e-commerce, and the systems that tie them together. I’ve built and led creative teams, launched new brands from zero, and reshaped how those teams work day to day. The constant is judgment: knowing what to make, why it matters, and how to ship it without lowering the bar on craft.