“Carly Ayres is a person, living and working in Brooklyn, New York.” She specializes in creating, consuming, curating, and distributing content at CreativeMornings, a breakfast lecture series on creativity, branding, and just general living. We’ll let her tell you more about her work there in just a bit.
Ayres is also a regular contributor over at Core77, an industrial design blog for professionals and enthusiasts alike. In her free time, Ayres is “a voracious reader, pie baker, and aspiring indoor-plant horticulturist.”
She tweets: @carlyayres, blogs: over here, Instagrams: carlyayres, and chats with Being Geek Chic…
Q: How did you discover your passion?
A: It was more of a slow burn. There wasn’t an ‘ah-ha’ moment. I was a senior majoring in Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) when I finally came to terms with the fact that I didn’t want to pursue a career in product design. After spending four years welding metal and carving wood, I realized that my favorite part of product design was the initial process‚ speaking with users, digging into their needs, and synthesizing those experiences.
I took a step back from my work and saw that I had already been doing the work I cared about, molding the curriculum to satisfy the projects that I wanted to be doing. I was doing independent studies that involved lots of research, interviewing and speaking with people, and telling stories, but that didn’t result in physical, functional products. One of these projects was why-we-make, which cataloged the stories of RISD alumni and their own circuitous paths to creative fulfillment.
That project made me take another look at my own path to what I was doing and what I wanted to be doing moving forward. That summer, I turned down an internship in product design to work for CreativeMornings, a lecture series for creative communities, and joined them full time after I graduated.
At CreativeMornings, I head up all things content as Chief Content Officer, overseeing the consumption, creation, and distribution of content in all of its myriad forms across its 85+ chapters around the world. From blog posts to press releases, I look for ways to tell the stories of our community.
Q: Where do you find your inspiration in life?
A: Everything comes back to people. With CreativeMornings, the stories are about people and the audience is people. The stories of these people, the steps they take, and what that leads to always excites me and I love talking to them and connecting those dots.
I recently highlighted the work of Vasco Mourao, who is an amazingly talented illustrator in addition to organizing the CreativeMornings chapter in Barcelona. In the interview, he shares a quote that really resonates with me: “If you fail at your work, it is not failure at all, but if you fail at your relationships, that’s really failure.”
Everything comes down to the people you meet and the relationships you have with them. With Vasco’s story, I was excited to hear that quote because it resonated with the work I am doing and kept me thinking long after the interview was over. My hope in sharing these stories is that others will have similar experiences, taking away bits and pieces and incorporating them into their own lives in an impactful way.
Q: What makes a good storyteller?
A: Curiosity. I always remember a story my dad told me from his dating days when he was complaining to a friend about how a girl he had met was 'so boring.’ His friend told him that it wasn’t the girl who was boring, but that the fault was on my father who failed to discover what was interesting about her.
I think being genuinely interested in what someone is saying and asking thoughtful questions are the most valuable traits to making a good storyteller. 'Non-judgmental listening’ is term I picked up from culture analyst Sharon Ann Lee, who describes it as the way Jane Goodall worked with the apes, sitting and observing, reserving all judgement.
Q: If you could take any fictional character out for a drink, whom would you choose and what would you drink?
This is a hard question. I just finished Meg Wolitzer’s “The Interestings,” so am wishing I could grab a drink with Jules Jacobson and have a deep conversation on life and growing up, which is something I think a lot about these days.
Q: What would you tell your 13-year-old self?
A: Speaking of growing up.. Once you get those braces off, things are going to start looking way up for you. You don’t know it yet because you really don’t know a lot at this point. You can’t know what you don’t know, but if you know that you don’t know anything, at least you’ll know something.
When you know better, you do better, so start doing as many things as possible and experiencing as many things as you can because the quickest way to discovering what you do like is by doing all the things you don’t like first.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but straight lines are boring, so make sure you do everything the long, hard, stupid way and carve for yourself an expansive winding route. And while you are on that long, winding, circuitous path, stop judging yourself and love everything, unabashedly.
Emma Bauer is a Being Geek Chic Contributor. Clearly, she’s got great taste. She is a PR enthusiast, history scholar, tea drinker, fashion devotee, and of course, aspires to Be Geek Chic. Follow her on Twitter: @emmalynnbauer