Young Lions Winners: How Today’s Rising Stars Would Recruit the Next Generation of Creative Talent
‘Big Pants,’ a video created by Phineas Alexander and Graham Barbour, won silver in the U.S. Young Lions.
One of The Creative Ladder’s most important missions is to reach the next generation of creative professionals—namely those who don’t even know their future career paths exist.
But as a nonprofit that advocates for future creative talent, how do you most effectively reach young people who could benefit from your message—and convince them to consider roles that largely thrive behind the scenes without much public attention?
That’s the challenge our 501(c)(3) nonprofit gave to U.S. Young Lions hopefuls this year as they competed with peers nationwide to represent their country at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Sponsored by National CineMedia, which honored The Creative Ladder by selecting us as their nonprofit partner for the 2023 U.S. Young Lions, this year’s competition was also made possible through support from sponsors Pereira O’Dell, UM, Digitas, Weber Shandwick and FCB New York.
Jurors from many of today’s top agencies, brands and platforms recently selected the winners in this year’s U.S. Young Lions, who will attend Cannes Lions at no cost.
National CineMedia hosted a reception for this year’s jurors and finalists, who learned that evening which of them would be going to Cannes.
Below is a look at the work from this year’s winners, who were asked to pitch ideas that would get more teens taking The Creative Ladder’s Career Finder Quiz, which you can try for yourself at quiz.creativeladder.org.
FILM
Gold Winners: Catarina Barcala, MullenLowe, and Palak Kapadia, Amazon
Silver Winners: Phineas Alexander and Graham Barbour, Sly Dog Creative
Bronze Winners: Rafael Sosa and Steven Stoner, Deutsch NY
DIGITAL
Gold Winners: Benjamin Lin and Sarah Park, Havas
Silver Winners: Daphne Lee and Katie Zheng, Broth
Bronze Winners: Enrike Grageda and Billy Palmer, Digitas
PR
Gold Winners: John Chavez and Emma LeMay, Weber Shandwick
Silver Winners: Addison McKenna and Henry Zeng, Weber Shandwick
Bronze Winners: Michael Philbin and Ashley White, Deutsch NY
MEDIA
Gold Winners: Sahar Farshi and Caroline Riggs, Initiative
Silver Winners: Kyla Alberto and Percival Sibanda, Initiative
Bronze Winners: Marina Budi and Lauren Waldrop, VMLY&R Commerce
Gold Winners: Megan Coats and Kieran Murray, MullenLowe
Silver Winners: Amy Char, 215 McCann, and Heather Patterson, Deutsch LA
Bronze Winners: Nicole Gostek and Yunxuan Wu, Digitas North America
We at The Creative Ladder are so tremendously impressed by the work of this year’s U.S. Young Lions competitors, and we’re honored to have been the official nonprofit partner of this year’s program thanks to the generosity of National CineMedia.
We look forward to seeing this year’s Young Lions—from the U.S. and all other nations—at Cannes Lions and continuing to support their career journeys.
And don’t forget to try our Career Finder Quiz for yourself and share it with anyone in your life who might need some guidance on their path to finding a fulfilling career!
David Griner is co-founder and Chief Content Officer of The Creative Ladder. He can be reached at david@creativeladder.org.