Finding Your Feel with Kamauri Yeh

Fashion · 24/04/11

Finding Your Feel with Kamauri Yeh
What does it mean to be a seasoned creative?

At a long table of art directors, designers, writers, and narrative experts, Kamauri Yeh sits at the head, as Global Women's Creative Director for Nike. The brand’s world renowned campus, not far from Portland, Oregon is home to sports research labs, design studios, product-creation facilities, and the global organization to support all of Nike's pursuits. It starts here, where the creative collaborators seated beside her locally and to the studio experts that span the globe, that Yeh is an orchestrator who moves swiftly in her talent to connect the dots between concept and tangibility.

When artistic choices become backed by intention, Yeh and her team unlock an ability to world-build, transforming the cities their work touches. Backlit colors can become useful tools to illuminate the curtain that backdrops Sha’Carri Richardson, and music can be the driving pulse to a narrator’s ability to message change. At Nike, there is an identity, and all aspects of production are channeled into a larger purpose to expand on it.

But to be creative, let alone helm the head seat of the world’s leading apparel brand’s Women Creative Studio, was neither an early nor foreseeable aspiration. Hailing from Salt Lake City, Utah, Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) role models, especially within creative or marketing industries, were far and few between. When Yeh packed her bags and moved to Los Angeles for her role as Media & Entertainment manager at Twitter, she embarked on a season of many firsts. Engaging with diverse communities ranging from the Koreatown Runclub to basketball teams out in Inglewood, Yeh was, unexpectedly, along for the ride.
Most strikingly, Yeh recounts a lightbulb memory at Roy Choi’s Commissary at the Line Hotel for a “Koreans in Advertising” dinner. Entering without expectation, the night of shared laughs, drinks, and communion left her instilled with allurement. From the initial “what the heck is this?” to “never having seen so many Asians [her] age who worked in advertising”, Yeh began to peel back on the layers of herself to an untapped pride for her Asian culture.

Over the past five years, Yeh has passionately lifted up AAPI voices through Asian American Girl Club (AAGC), an apparel brand pioneering the meaning behind becoming a next generation of celebrated Asian American Women. Cited as most special, she also partnered Women of Ascend (Nike’s ERG Asian Group) with AAGC for a mentorship series, further empowering her to strengthen and build community.

“Living in LA, I had all these different perspectives that were being brought to me on the daily,” Yeh told Muse. “I think it allowed me to find a lot of unique ways and interesting angles in my role as a storyteller at Nike that I had never thought about before.”

It’s interesting the things we each fall in love with, the details that catch our eyes like a secret. It’s in the way that any apparel can be good, but lies within Issey Miyaki’s obsession, that makes his pleats distinguishable. It’s all around us. When Yeh is creating something new for Nike, she is able to pull from her vault of self study, within the fashion that moves her, the graphics that gravitate, or even the old editorial Vogue issues featuring Kate Moss that tug at her nostalgia.

“It spans a spectrum. A lot of that is just being inspired by different exposures and my own interests, and seeing how to bring that into the world of sport is always really fun for me,” Yeh said.

“Taste-level” informs a decision-making process to create signature. It harnesses an eye for specificity and a grasp on discernment, one that is integral to editing for a larger brand. In the trust of her lens and leadership, Yeh optimizes Nike’s impact in striking a balance between self and brand.
“A big part of what I love doing is stripping things back to its most raw form,” said Yeh. “You can just really understand what the image is trying to say to you. It’s strong and iconic. I feel like I really gravitate to things that feel more minimal, thus really powerful, and I've developed that over time.”

But it isn’t stagnant. Curating a catalog of what piques our obsession comes with the discipline of understanding how to feed our creative. In a career that is centered around ideas, Yeh stylizes a practice to recharge and mobilize her own. Just over the weekend prior to ours, she had relayed insights from a conversation with other well known creatives in the industry. Carving out Friday mornings for weekly conversations with taste-makers external to Nike has become a sacred form of sought out creative wellness.

“Just having conversations with people is super stimulating for me,” she said, “because I’m thinking about ways we could work together, connect the dots, or approach something.”

It’s important to feed oneself in order to feed others. There is mental strength that working in creative requires—but more often goes overlooked. In an industry where ownership over ideas is celebrated, the vulnerability of leaving some behind often follows. Sacrifice covers the cutting room floor in moving a project forward, and when the work is so visible, it can become one of the most emotional spaces to work in. But within risk, there is reward.

Under a generative leadership style, in her role, Yeh cultivates a culture built on trust and respect. In taking the time to meet collaborators in places that move them, ideas can flow freely within an ecosystem centered by care. Mentorship is found in all facets of the team, and creative becomes a team sport.

“It’s always about finding that balance of representation of myself versus myself in a project,” Yeh said. “So when you go to a review, and it’s less of ‘I want someone to approve my idea’, but more ‘I want this person’s input because I want to make this idea better’— it changes the way you think about something.”
The feeling is exciting when it doesn’t stop at home base. I heard it first from fashion podcaster and media mogul Recho Omondi who referred to Nike as “the matrix”, when I glimpsed the depth of the brand's extensive networks. In simpler terms, Nike Creative is a multiverse of studios, led by more studio experts. They aren’t just in New York or LA—to Nike, they’re global. They speak different languages and their craft is driven by their own lived experiences, flourishing cultures, and seasoned taste-levels.

I caught Yeh as she shares the reward in launching “Find Your Feel”, Nike Women’s most recent campaign that has touched down in the hearts of London and Seoul. The creative process begins at the campus drawing board, where Yeh and her team lay down a framework for the campaign’s identity that is cool, muted in color, and swaying with movement. Ideas then get shared out to global studios, and the concepts are molded by the hands of their studio heads who execute the deliverables with a localized eye. How will “Find Your Feel” be experienced in their own backyard?

“Working closely with the Seoul studio creative director we got to really understand more about their culture and spaces that we should shoot in; things we could do, things we could say, not say—really getting these cultural immersions. That’s one of the best parts about working for a global brand, the exposure you have to so many different cultures,” Yeh said.

Campaigns thus become a baton passed from one creative to the next, in a relay race Yeh coaches from start to finish. Moving through the ebbs and flow of learning and leading, her work is an extension of a ride that keeps on going. And in lettering up to something bigger, she is bringing others along with her.

So, what does it mean to be a seasoned creative? As a question many search to answer, Kamauri’s story highlights a humility and acceptance in figuring it out. It’s nuanced and it’s tailored. It’s slow and it’s steady—and it’s not stopping here. A hunger to learn, and trailed by taste, is a world waiting to feed our curiosity, from wherever we may take our seats. So when the baton is now yours, how will you define your creative?
Speed round: What inspires you?
K: Travel. Fashion. Art. Music. Dance. Our athletes.

Do you have a specific song, or album, that you just love listening to to get the energy flowing?
K: Well, people who know me know that I love Big Energy by Mariah Carey. Shout out to Mimi.

Are there stand out moments from your career thus far? An “I made it” moment or project?
K: All-Star Weekend in 2018 in LA was incredibly challenging, but equally rewarding. We were able to host athletes like Kobe, and I’ll never forget the way his words filled with poise and confidence captured the room. It was so special looking back on it.

Tokens of wisdom to an aspiring creative director?
K: The most important thing about being a creative is first and foremost, loving the work yourself. I always remind my team not to worry about who they are selling to. If they love the work, that’s the most important thing that matters.

Lastly, there is a fine line between going to work as a creative for an organization and making for yourself, always make sure you are creating space to fuel your own creative spirit, this will not always come from your 9-5.

How about a rose, thorn, and a bud?
K: Rose for me is my team, they are such a group of talented creatives. It’s so cool every day to just get to see their ideas come to the world. It’s really special I think especially in this campaign… “Find Your Feel”: to see it all over the world has been pretty magical because you remember the times when you're in the trenches or sometimes people aren’t getting along great… And then to see the work out live in the world, you’re like, “Okay, we did something right.” It’s paying off, and people are loving it.

A thorn for me, the same thorn probably most people have, is just never enough hours in the day. You want to be able to do it all and there’s just not enough hours in the day. Although, I try!

But a bud is that we’ve got exciting things coming up. We are still just getting started here at Nike Women.
Reach Editor-in-Chief Erin Grace Kim at musemediauw@gmail.com
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