episode 055: Amanda Lee Smith

Amanda Lee Smith is a true visionary. An early start in journalism as a teen led her into a career in communications at various places, before landing a plum brand content role at Kit and Ace. She then took a chance on herself, launching Coterie Co., which eventually became Monday Creative, a branding & content marketing agency that counts lululemon, Arc'teryx, HerschelSupply, Smash & Tess, EA Sports, and more as clients. She grew up with two sisters (one her twin) in the suburbs, in a supportive home that regularly practiced Evangelical Christianity, with loving parents who have been married for 52 years. Ambitious and unafraid from a young age, she was into everything under the sun: school, books, writing, sports, student council, punk rock. After her marriage ended, Amanda went through a reckoning with her faith, a process that shifted her identity and broke her open to all kinds of nuances & groups that exist in life and in the world. Since then, Amanda has continued to forge her path ahead, evolving Monday Creative into its new strategic partnership with RANGE, teaching digital storytelling at UBC and, more recently, entering the world of angel investing with Futuretense Capital. In this conversation, we explore how her religion & faith shaped her identity and how it has evolved over the years; the book trilogy she wrote in the first grade and a teen punk rock phase; where her love for storytelling came from; working at Kit and Ace & the talented team from that chapter; how Monday’s strategic partnership with RANGE serendipitously came to be; her passion for apparel circularity & emerging fabric technology; getting into angel investing and the Futuretense values; her relationship with the concept of grace in daily life; and much more.