Scaling Doma’s creative team through an acquisition and an IPO
Uniting three companies under one brand, and building the creative operation that carried it to an IPO.
- Company
- Doma
- Role
- Senior Creative Director
- Scope
- Creative operations
- Team building
- Brand rollout
- Stakeholder alignment
Brief
States Title, a tech startup, acquired two long-established title companies and set out to become one company: Doma. I was brought in to unify all three under one brand, and to build the creative organization that would carry it from acquisition to IPO.
Challenge
A creative team of two went from serving one business to serving three. Each company had its own history and its own way of working, and none of them could slow down while we brought them together under one name. The work was multiplying. The team had to grow with it, and keep delivering the whole time.
Solution
The answer was a foundation, laid before we needed it. First, the relationships: I spent real time with leaders and teams at each company, listened to what wasn’t working for them and followed through, until creative felt like their team too. Then the systems: one intake for every request, templates and self-serve tools for anything evergreen, and processes new designers could step straight into. And the structure: three senior designers each led a part of the business and mentored a junior designer within it, so decisions got made close to the work, with me coaching the seniors every week.
Result
The foundation held as the team grew, and the team ran without waiting on me. We delivered about 600 unique assets in a single quarter, moved every legacy office to Doma, and put the brand we’d unified on the New York Stock Exchange for the IPO. Along the way, one of those senior designers grew into an art director.
