TELL ME ABOUT IT
yuriym15@gmail.com
I’ve been obsessed with advertising since I was a seven-year-old Belarusian immigrant trying to decode American culture through ‘Got Milk’ spots.
My path was… weird. I studied Civil Engineering at Stanford, co-founded a tech startup in San Francisco, and spent years doing standup comedy. On paper, these look like career pivots. But they were all training. Engineering taught me how to find the structure in chaos. Comedy taught me how to make that structure entertaining. Startups taught me that if the work doesn’t drive business results, it’s just investor abuse.
I’m as obsessed with the strategy as I am with the punchline. One builds the foundation. The other sells the house. You need both.
As a leader, I guide teams to find the structural tension in a brief and exploit it. I don’t want work that just gets a laugh. I want work that works. I’ve spent my career proving that great creativity drives business results at shops like GSP, Havas, R/GA, and Argonaut. I’ve written jokes for Colin Jost and Michael Che. Managed 360 campaigns for tech giants and Fortune 500s. Worked directly with brands like Zocdoc and T-Mobile. Got the shiny awards. Managed in-house and freelancer teams. All while staying ridiculously humble ;)
I also co-founded Laugh Your Ads Off, where we teach the next generation of creatives and executives how to think and sell funny.
I’m still that seven-year-old kid. Still obsessed with clever advertising. Still desperate to see more of it.