Why Creative Leaders Must Learn the Language of Business

Here’s the advice Ekaterina Solomeina gives every designer who wants to be seen as a leader, not just an executor: learn the language the business actually speaks.

I talked with Ekaterina — creative director, writer, and co-founder of Future London Academy — about what actually gets creatives into the room where strategy gets decided. Her answer wasn’t “make better work.” It was: translate the work you’re already doing into terms leadership cares about.

“If you want to show that you are capable of bringing strategic value, start to understand all the language of PL, CAC and LTV, TAM-SAM-SOM.”

Not instead of caring about craft — alongside it. Present the beautiful brand and the business value it created. That, she told me, is how promotions actually happen. It’s part of a bigger argument she makes: as AI commoditizes technical skills, the core creative ones — imagination, nonlinear problem-solving, empathy — become more valuable, not less. Her hope is ambitious: more chief design and creative officers sitting alongside the CFO and COO.

Ekaterina spent twenty years as a creative director working alongside people like Michael Wolff and Donatella Versace before co-founding Future London Academy in 2013. Its alumni now lead design at Apple, Nike, Netflix, and BMW, and she also hosts her own podcast, Creative Capes.

We also got into why 80% of creatives said they’d rather work at a company under 50 people, brand as a belief system rather than a campaign, and why founders need a “third identity” completely unrelated to work (hers is Muay Thai).

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