The Drop In: Conversations about leading with flexibility

When COVID-19 restrictions effectively shut down the entertainment industry last spring, president of Array and Array Releasing, Tilane Jones, worried that the progress her film distribution company had been making would halt, too. For the past decade, she has worked alongside award-winning filmmaker, Ava DuVernay (Selma, A Wrinkle in Time), to make film – and filmmaking – more accessible by amplifying films made by women and people of colour.

But now, with no red carpets or packed theaters to connect with audiences, what at first seemed like a setback quickly became an opportunity. Learn how Jones and her team pivoted.

What began as distance tutoring, that Sal Khan did to help a young cousin struggling with algebra, has grown into a powerful non-profit educational platform. Today, Khan Academy serves millions of students from nursery to the early university years with free recorded lessons in maths, science, humanities and more, in 46 languages.

When schools around the world closed due to the pandemic, Khan hustled to create resources to help parents, teachers and students pivot to virtual learning. Hear how Khan Academy rose to the challenges of growing a business to meet real-time need and why Khan chooses to resist doing it all in favour of doing things right.

The husband-and-wife co-founders and managing partners of New York City creative agency Team Epiphany have always viewed their nearly 80 employees as family. And it’s precisely this tight-knit culture that got everyone through months of pandemic-induced business slow-down and kept creativity flowing despite being apart.

Learn how Coltrane Curtis and Lisa Chu lead their distributed team in helping brands like HBO, Coca-Cola and Audi reinvent real-life events as digital and social experiences that are just as impactful.

When Steven Galanis launched Cameo in 2017, he set out to create the digital version of a celebrity autograph with his service that features personalised video shout-outs from famous people. The app saw steady growth until last spring when usage skyrocketed. In a time of shelter-in-place orders and no live events, sending Cameos to loved ones has become a form of spreading joy, as well as a way for celebs to connect with fans. Hear how Galanis is leaning into a work-from-anywhere team culture and keeping ahead of unprecedented growth.