2019 has been a tremendous year for our company. We were honored to work on projects and participate in campaigns that were fueled by compassion, authenticity and equity. We expanded our team to include some of the most creative, passionate people on the planet. At the same time, some incredible people who helped build our company departed this year to explore new opportunities. We are deeply grateful for their contributions to our company’s journey and carry their stories with us as we venture into a new year.
We know that 2020 will change the course of our nation, and the world, for generations to come. As a company, we will enter the new year with a deeper commitment to the communities we serve, the clients that we are grateful to partner with, and movements and campaigns that protect the heart of our nation.
Next year, we will create the kind of work that supports a compassionate path forward. A call to act with courage, with the highest of hope. We are forever committed to that calling.
This upcoming year, we also hope to share more about our practices at The Soze Agency and how we are creating our company — with an unwavering commitment to our values, while always putting people and the planet in front of profit, unapologetically.
2020 will be a defining year for many of us. We cannot wait to get started!
Soze.
2019 HIGHLIGHTS
We were honored to work on projects and participate in campaigns that were fueled by compassion, authenticity and equity — our 3 core values. We have the privilege of only doing work we believe in and that we’re proud of, and without our incredible clients and partners it wouldn’t be possible.
Here are some highlights from the past year:
AMERICAN EAGLE
OUTFITTERS
This year, American Eagle Outfitters partnered with The Soze Agency to develop the AExME Youth Council, a group of socially conscious young people who advise the brand on major issues and appear in their international ad campaigns. We look forward to our continued work in 2020!
HBO: O.G.
In support of HBO’s film O.G., The Soze Agency curated and produced a pop-up art exhibit at Studio 525's gallery space in New York City — the first exhibit in the country that showcased the work of exclusively formerly incarcerated artists. The 10-day pop up welcomed thousands of visitors, and was the site of private dinners and screenings of the film, various programs, live music and more. At its core, the exhibition expanded the possibilities of how art might respond to a lived experience of confinement and helps reaffirm a larger truth: vast and rich human potential, artistic or otherwise, is wasted when 2.3 million people are behind bars. The pop-up was awarded a silver Clio Award for Experiential Events.
NO PLASTIC WASTE
The Soze Agency was hired by The Minderoo Foundation, to create and execute a full digital and narrative campaign for their new initiative, No Plastic Waste, which was launched at the United Nations during this year’s UNGA. The goal of the initiative is to end all plastic waste in the world, as it is destroying our oceans, our animals and our planet.
TOMS SHOES
In the fight to end gun violence together, TOMS partnered with The Soze Agency to produce a nationwide bus tour. The tour stopped in eight cities across the country and collected signed postcards demanding universal background checks. Over 700,000 cards were hand-delivered to Congress.
BEN & JERRY’S
Ben & Jerry's wanted their customers to have closer proximity to understanding the issue of mass incarceration and called on Soze to support them in this important endeavor. In support of the Justice Remix’d campaign, The Soze Agency designed and curated an exhibit for their Waterbury factory in Vermont, which welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. The exhibit featured the work of Right of Return fellows, all formerly incarcerated artists. Fast company wrote about our work, you can read more here.
GIRLS WHO CODE
For 2019’s International Day of the Girl, The Soze Agency supported Girls Who Code in executing and amplifying their first-ever #MarchForSisterhood, a nation-wide digital march. We assembled over one hundred young activists, artists and changemakers to promote the even and produced the college-based actions that simultaneously ran at 11 campuses across the country. Overall, more than 2,500 videos were produced, and the campaign received over 800 million impressions.
FWD.US
In partnership with the I Stand With Immigrants Initiative, The Soze Agency produced a multi-city tour encouraging communities to come together and celebrate immigrants. With FWD.us, we introduced French Montana as the first-ever #IStandWithImmigrants Ambassador. Lastly, we brought together over 20 artists during Art Basel to discuss the power of art and activism at the inaugural 'I Stand With Immigrants' Artist Retreat.
GOOGLE + YOUTUBE
Over the past few years, we've advised Google on a number of their social impact initiatives, including their criminal justice reform work. This year, we produced a special event with YouTube bringing together content creators and criminal justice reform activists.
THE LEADERSHIP
CONFERENCE ON
CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS
In an effort to increase how culture and the role of artists can help expand both local and national organizing efforts for civil and human rights, The Soze Agency partnered with the Communications and Campaign teams of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to create a cultural strategy for their work. As a part of the strategy, we launched the Civil Rights Lab, a cross section of artists, influencers and social justice advocates, who we provided with content and weekly issue briefings to support the amplification and digital organizing efforts of The Leadership Conference. We also supported the curation and programming of Seasons 1 and 2 of Pod for the Cause, hosted by Vice President of Campaigns, Ashley Allison. The work over the past year has showcased the ability culture has to work in tandem with efforts of advocacy and organizing.
WE VOTE NEXT
We are beyond honored to partner with Yara Shahidi on her Eighteenx18 initiative. Building on 2018’s #WeVoteNext Summit, the 2019 retreat, brought together 40 powerful young leaders who will do everything they can to inspire the largest youth voter turnout in history in 2020. The summit served as a community builder and provided space to strategize around the ways in which young people can make a difference in the 2020 election, how their issues can be amplified and how they can uplift their peers.
RIGHT OF RETURN USA FELLOWSHIP
With generous support from Open Philanthropy Project, The Soze Agency, along with our Co-Chairs Jesse Krimes and Russell Craig, launched our third year of the Right of Return USA fellowship: the first and only artist fellowship in the nation designed specifically to support formerly incarcerated artists. Each artist is granted $20,000 to create work centered on ending mass incarceration. At the top of 2020, we will have 19 fellows from various disciplines. Collectively, the work created has been a broad, multifaceted response to mass incarceration, using video, sculpture, painting, photography, commissioned installations, poetry readings, and performances.
WE ARE PROUD TO WORK WITH ALL OUR AMAZING CLIENTS AND PARTNERS
NEW TEAM MEMBERS
Terrick Gutierrez
Terrick joined the Soze team as a fellow last winter and began working full-time this summer. He has worked on many of our production teams, such as HBO, Voters Organized, the Museum of Broken Windows and, last month, completed a successful first production as client lead with the Incarceration Nations Network platform launch event.
Terrick is a phenomenal artist & photographer and has a Master’s in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU. We are so grateful to have his brilliance on our team and so proud of the work he’s done with us so far.
Jacqueline Devine
Jacqueline joined our team in June and manages our digital, social media and artist engagement. She has worked on projects such as Eighteenx18, No Plastic Waste, and Google.
Before joining the team, Jacqueline earned her MFA in digital media & design from the University of Connecticut. Her thesis analyzed the ways in which artists and brands partnered during the #MeToo movement.
She is deeply passionate about intersectional feminism, songwriting and keeping up with the latest standup comedy specials.
Keri Goff
Keri comes on as our Director of Digital Strategy, Creative, and Storytelling. Previously, she spent eight years at DoSomething.org, working on social impact campaigns that inspired young people to take action in their communities.
She’s a South Carolina native, who is passionate about mental health, loves early 2000’s R&B and street art.
Sonjia Hyon
Sonjia is joining Soze as the Director of Operations. Her multidisciplinary interests has lead her to work in various capacities in a range of fields: such as a professor of Asian American studies at Hunter College, director of special projects at Haven's Kitchen, and operations at Momofuku. Most recently, she was the business operations director at CSM Sport and Entertainment overseeing the design, strategy, and business development departments.
She believes the organizational culture is instrumental to nurturing creativity, and the expression of creativity is a necessary right for all humans to thrive and approach the world in all its complexity. Sonjia has a PhD in American studies from the University of Minnesota, and lives in Brooklyn with her family.
FAREWELL
DANIEL LEON-DAVIS
At The Soze Agency, the exits are as important as the entrances, so we celebrate both equally. At the end of 2019, we said good-bye to our founding partner and co-owner, Daniel Alejandro Leon-Davis, who has been with the company since day one. He has helped shape the company and has been integral to our success and growth.
Daniel is someone who embodies the core values of our company. He is endlessly creative, a passionate artist whose ingenuity and relentless drive fuels all his work. His spirit will be firmly ingrained in our work moving forward, and we’re eternally proud of all he did while at our company. We cannot wait to see what the next chapter of his journey brings the world!
We wish him the absolute best in his next endeavor, and are forever grateful for the time, wisdom and inimitable creativity he brought to our company and each and every project he worked on.
Thank you for everything, Daniel. Keep creating. Keep inspiring. And definitely keep dancing!