What does a career pivot actually look like?

Reframing career longevity in a content-driven economy

Illustration by Marina Muun

Such stories of successful pivots are galvanizing for everyday makers and creatives who face a volatile job market and doom-and-gloom predictions that new technologies will swiftly replace creative work.

To counterbalance the day’s pervasive pessimism, Adobe Design spoke to three women who have approached their own creative careers with agile, long-term thinking. Their trajectories suggest major keys to growth and longevity: flexibility, collaboration and community, and an open-minded approach to evolving innovations.

What comes next?

“I don’t have this linear story, but there’s a throughline across my career,” says Marina Cashdan, VP Creative at Brooklinen, the direct-to-consumer bedding giant. After she graduated with an English degree from Barnard College, Cashdan spent years writing and editing articles about culture for publications such as T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Frieze, and Surface before working her way to VP of Content and Brand at Artsy, an online art marketplace with an editorial arm. “I lead creative work like an editor,” she says. “You need a clear voice, a point of view, and consistency to build trust.”

Cashdan left Artsy in 2020 and has since worked in brand strategy, as Head of Creative & Communications at Harry’s (a shaving and men’s personal care company), as a consultant for Lake & Skye fragrances and Skylight digital calendars, and now as a leader at a premier linens purveyor. Over the past six months, Cashdan has been part of a brand refresh that helps distinguish Brooklinen in a competitive, ever-evolving space. “My career has always been about storytelling,” she says. “Editorial taught me how to find truth and emotion in a story, and how words and visuals work together. Design is part of that too. They’re all interconnected, just applied in different environments.”

When it’s time to try something new

Sam Corbin, a Games columnist for The New York Times, identifies a love for language as her own career through-line. Before the pandemic, Corbin worked as a Creative Lead at BuzzFeed. She made sponsored content, working on advertorial videos and writing listicles and quizzes to help sell advertisers’ products. She also hosted comedy shows about language and became an all-star in the niche world of competitive punning. Corbin hoped her endeavors would lead to television writing, editorial, or selling a book.

When the pandemic hit, Corbin’s creative momentum slowed. A friend helped her get a copywriting job, and she built a portfolio of quick, witty content. The role held her over until she saw a job posting that looked tailor made for her: Wordplay columnist at The New York Times. “It presented a fun new challenge,” she says. “I’d write for a bigger audience, explaining the twists and humor of crosswords and word puzzles. It was in line with my values as an artist.”

Corbin recently sold her first book, Year of the Word, which explores contemporary linguistic shifts. “Once you get a thing you’ve been hoping for, you realize all these rejections and false starts were working towards it,” she says. “To be an artist, you have to believe in yourself even when no one else does.”

You already have everything you need, sometimes it just requires a retool

If Cashdan and Corbin have found creative ways to iterate on verbal interests, Canadian gallerist Davida Nemeroff, creator of Night Gallery, has harnessed her skills in the visual realm to create a major platform for emerging artists in downtown Los Angeles. Nemeroff’s passion for photography began early, when she snuck into her older brother’s room to use Adobe Photoshop. “That was a breakthrough moment for me,” she says. The program helped her create her first photography portfolio and matriculate into a BFA program at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University), before earning her MFA in photography at Columbia University in the late aughts.

Shortly after graduating, Nemeroff moved to Los Angeles. She lost access to the university photography equipment that allowed her to make art the way she wanted, and decided to make a change. This was the genesis of Night Gallery, where she applied her skills to creating a compelling brand identity. Nemeroff made and sold posters and flyers, disseminating information through her unique visual language. The gallery gained renown across Los Angeles’s underground art scene and beyond.

In the early 2010s, Nemeroff and her then-business partner Mieke Marple embraced Instagram's capacity to promote their artists and activities for free. The platform allowed them to instantly share artwork and installation images with a public audience and to grow their international following of collectors, curators, art advisors, writers, artists, and art enthusiasts.

The gallery evolved to take on new staff and artists. Night Gallery gave painting phenom Robert Nava his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles (and his second solo exhibition in the US). Nemeroff recently presented new work by painter Claire Tabouret, who won an international competition judged by Laurent Ulrich, archbishop of Paris, and French President Emmanuel Macron to create new stained glass windows for Notre-Dame Cathedral. Last year, the gallery celebrated its fifteenth anniversary.

Going with the flow, even when it feels like you’re being carried off

Across their disparate industries, Corbin, Cashdan, and Nemeroff have all faced massive market shifts. Corbin and Cashdan have worked for media companies that made rounds of layoffs, while Nemeroff is weathering a contracting art market. And each contends with the concerns and benefits of AI in their own way.

In the macro market, Cashdan says, there are things you can’t control. Most recently, this took the form of new tariffs. “As a leader, you have to look at what you can control, then decide where to respond or pull levers,” she says. “You might have to go around a table with your marketing partners and rethink things that were true two months ago but aren’t any longer. You have to be agile as you respond to cultural and economic change.” Sometimes that looks like revising strategy and building creative to support that.

While Cashdan and her team use AI, especially to make the post-production process more efficient, “it doesn’t replace creativity,” she says. “It’s a great tool for creatives, but if everything looks and feels the same, things will lean more human. We’re constantly assessing every quarter. Where can we be more efficient while staying true to the brand, remaining authentic?”

This can also mean looking outside the office. Nemeroff has amped up Night Gallery’s collaborations over the past couple of years. She opened Sidecar, a gallery that co-presents exhibitions with outside galleries and curators. This fall, Night Gallery has a curatorial residency at Arsenal Contemporary NY, which allows Nemeroff to welcome New York audiences into the Night Gallery fold. The gallerist also curated a viewing room at the auxiliary space of Tribeca’s CANADA gallery. “Collaboration is a long-term key to success. It has been for a long time, and it’s being more fore fronted. Like anything, you have to look at the long view versus the short term return,” she says. While this necessitates surrendering some control, collaborations can work well if the parties share common goals. They can offset overhead while allowing a gallery to develop and promote artists in the long term.

It’s always about people

Collaboration has similarly been key to Cashdan’s career. She’s worked in cross-disciplinary environments with writers, photographers, artists, and filmmakers in service of telling the most meaningful stories possible.

Such emphasis on human connection and specialized skills allows Corbin and Nemeroff to remain unfazed by the emergence of sophisticated AI developments. Nemeroff considers herself a professional Photoshop user and trusts her skills and experience completely when it comes to image manipulation. Corbin has similar faith in her ability. “I know the value of language,” she says. Both know that machines can’t harness the power of a human’s intuition or lived experience.

Cashdan, Corbin, and Nemeroff all lead with consistent passion while adapting to the times. They trust their own voices, aesthetics, and expertise to guide them into the next marketing campaign, book project, or gallery exhibition, learning from the past while always pushing forward.

So, what does a pivot actually look like? It isn’t some dramatic departure from who you are. Often, it’s simply an expansion of what your skills can do—and the person behind them.