About.
Inessah Selditz is an Executive Creative Leader who has built and led award-winning teams at agencies and studios in NYC.
Inessah (she/her/hers) is experienced leading multidisciplinary teams and creates large-scale, immersive brand experiences that blend hybrid digital and physical touchpoints along a consumer journey. She has led the creative direction of high profile projects like The Edge, the tallest outdoor observation deck in the Western Hemisphere, which won several top industry design and innovation awards. Her strategy work is focused on developing competitively positioned and differentiated brand narratives within crowded markets. She has worked directly with CEOs, C-suite and leadership teams to distill business objectives into a compelling brand expression and experiences. Notable projects include the positioning and launch of Hudson Yards, the biggest real estate deal in U.S. history and TsX one of the single most expensive retail leases in N.A. As an executive leader, she has defined the larger, strategic and creative vision for businesses and stood up functions, teams and processes to align towards key goals and objectives.
Her background is in UX and editorial storytelling, and her POV is fundamentally human centered and has a narrative driven approach. She understands the challenge of translating brand stories into engaging experiences, and her work has an evocative, immersive and oftentimes playful quality. Inessah received a master's degree in interaction design and emerging technology from New York University's I.T.P. and studied fashion design and advertising in undergraduate university.
She is passionate about diverse representation at all levels and co-founded BIPOC Directors Collective, an initiative by directors of color for fellow and future directors of color. Spurred by the BLM movement and knowing that systemic racism does not change without representation at leadership levels, BIPOC-DC hosted their first conference in fall 2020. The conference brought top BIPOC leadership together across industries including directors from the Obama Presidential Center, Vanity Fair, The NY Times, Washington Post and Smithsonian.
Experience
Executive Creative Director, Superfly
Executive Creative Director, A_DA
Group Experiential Director, Huge
Creative Director and Studio Lead, LAB at Rockwell Group
Associate Fashion Editor, Women’s Health (Hearst, Rodale)
Awards
Campaign Award, Inspiring Women 2024
Cannes, Design
Event Marketer, Best Retail
Event Marketer, Best Use of AI
Fast Company, Innovation by Design Winner, Fashion
Fast Company, Circular Design
Fast Company, Experience Design
Fast Company, Most Innovative Architecture
Fast Company, Innovation by Design Awards
Interior Design, Best of the Year Award
NYCxDesign, Best Installation/Exhibition
NYCxDesign, Healthcare Honoree
Clients
Academy Awards
Andreessen Horowitz
Away
Brookfield
Chief
Conde Nast
Corcoran Sunshine
Cowboy Museum
Fisher Brothers
Genius
Hard Rock
Hearst
Hudson Yards
Instagram
L&L Holding Co
M.A.C.
Meta
Microsoft
National Building Museum
Nike
Netflix
Nobu
Olympic Museum
Oxford Properties
Pangaia
Paramount
Pioneer Works
Related
Rockstar
Samsung
Smithsonian
Starwood
TAO Group
The Hip Hop Museum
Tia Healthcare
TsX
Uber
Universal
Teaching and Affiliations
New Museum, New Inc Mentor
Mentor for the New Museum’s incubator program which focuses on the intersection of art, design and technology
Parsons The New School, Adjunct Professor
Course: Interactive Interiors
Course covering immersive storytelling in spaces, UX design of hybrid digital and physical experiences and survey of emerging technologies.
SEGD, Society for Experiential Graphic Design
Academic Task Force
Industry committee dedicated to academic and educational advancement of global university programs focused on experiential graphic design.
Speaking Engagements
and Juries
AD Stars, Brand Experience and Activation Jury
ADC 101st Awards, Experiential Jury
Advertising Week, "Women Shifting Culture"
Adweek, Experiential Jury Awards
AIA, “Hudson Yards: 21st Century Neighborhood”
Archtober, “Blending the Digital and Physical”
B.I.G. Bjarke Ingels, “Narrative Driven Experiences”
Bronx Tech Summit, “Placemaking and Technology”
Clios, Experiential Innovation Jury
CoMuseum, “Re-positioning the Museum of Tomorrow”
EventTech, “Immersive Brand Storytelling”
Grey Advertising, “Brand Experiences from the Ground Up"
HDExpo, “What is the New Hospitality?”
Huge, “When Digital Meets Physical”
Interior Design Magazine, “Tech and Design”
Northside Festival, “Future of Cultural Experiences”
NYU I.T.P., “Transcending Digital and Physical Spaces”
One Club, Next Creative Leaders Jury
R/GA, “Experiential Master Planning”
SEGD, “Healthcare Innovations”
SEGD xLAB, “Experiences in the Age of Disruption”
Themed Entertainment Association, Keynote Panel 2024
Reading Recommendations
Reading materials that have served as sources of inspiration and reference:
The Experience Economy, HBR article- the most critical text for understanding the context of why this, why now? The article is the first reading assignment for the Parsons New School course
Design and the Elastic Mind- one of the best exhibits at MoMA ever shown
Sketching User Experiences- good reference for sketching untraditional user experiences
Understanding Comics- useful for understanding narrative storytelling
Logic and Design- for serious nerds only