About
Hi, I'm
Megha
These are the stories that shaped me — the ones that built the creative director I am now, and the reason I make the kind of work I do.
These are the stories that shaped me — the ones that built the creative director I am now, and the reason I make the kind of work I do.
I started pre-med and ended up a creative director. In between: five companies, three continents, and a lot of roads I took because I was curious about where they went.
None of it was a detour. Every turn taught me something I still use — how margin and manufacturing actually work, how to lead a team before I knew that's what I was doing, how to build things that don't fall over when something goes wrong.
I'm not a specialist who learned to be broad. I've been broad from the start, and it's the most useful thing about me.
A farm town girl from Canada, with a hint of gritty Detroit roots, and a deep love for the arts, I always dreamt of a bigger world. My journey began at the age of 4, traveling with my globe-trotting grandma – a retired school principal with a passionate dose of wanderlust. Her stories of adventure painted the world in vibrant hues, planting the seeds of my own adventures and deep appreciation for our planet.
I started my undergrad with the intention of med school but along the way became fascinated with learning everything I could about the humans, plants, animals, ecosystems and landscapes that make up our planet. From animal consciousness and human behavioral studies, to environmental sciences, evolution and neuropsychology, I soaked up knowledge about our world's intricate web.
During my undergrad, a major cholesteatoma — a benign ear tumor — nearly took my life, resulting in complete deafness and loss of vestibular function in my left ear.
In 2012, at 22 years old, while studying full-time, I co-founded Illbury + Goose. What started as a small pop-up t-shirt shop at farmers markets and music festivals evolved into an internationally recognized Canadian lifestyle brand — named after our grandparents' small businesses. We took our $3,000 investment and grew annual sales to more than $500K within the first few years.
I developed over 200 ethically made products in Canada and abroad, secured over $250K in seed investment, and led our team of creatives, employees and artisans — managing stores, finances, growth strategy, manufacturing, merchandising and creative brand direction. It was the foundation of my career as a multi-faceted creative director and entrepreneur.
In 2017, after selling Illbury and Goose to my partner, I went full Eat Pray Love. With a one-way ticket in hand, I dove into the rich tapestry of Indian culture and landscapes — and fell deeply in love with the people, perspectives, traditions, and myself.
Yet, it was 10 days in the middle of the desert that became some of the most important of my life. With a tuk tuk full of supplies and my local friend Sher by my side, I ventured into the Thar desert outside Jaisalmer, to meet communities in need — providing clothing, food, and medical supplies, hearing their stories along the way.
This experience ignited within me a profound realization of the transformative power of educating the next generation — a conviction that has shaped every move I've made since.
During my time living in Jaipur, I collaborated with business owners and artisans to solve brand and marketing problems, learning artisanal techniques along the way — and inevitably began designing for myself.
I designed a 30-piece, ethically made resort wear capsule collection called Chai Atelier, block-printed in the historic village of Bagru and manufactured by a women-owned factory.
I built experiential art installations for The Deighton Cup + Greenwood Stakes, curated an art and fashion event called Designed By Toronto, directed numerous creative campaigns, was nominated for Notable Life's Breakout Fashion Designer of the Year, and sat on their first Board of Advisors.
During this time I produced video content for The Mix, a Toronto media platform, where I directed, produced and sometimes hosted 60+ pieces of video content — and directed content for Somewhere Variety, a sustainable cannabis retail brand.
In 2018, while speaking on the Freedom Lifestyle podcast, I met the incredible women behind 'The Girls Trip' — a company empowering women to travel solo to cultural destinations around the world, while eliminating the barriers that prevent them from traveling in the first place.
Knowing my passion for solo travel and empowering women, they asked me to become the cultural host for their Bali retreats — sharing a culture I feel such deep love for, and inspiring more women to step through their fear of the unknown into a bolder, more courageous version of themselves.
In 2020 when the world locked down, I felt the rug pulled from under me — my California dreams paused, sick, quarantined and jobless in Toronto on Day 1.
I organized a BLM protest for my neighborhood, committed to becoming a stronger ally, consulted on design projects, and made art for the sake of art. I deepened my breathwork and mindfulness practices from India, and started teaching my community how to alleviate stress and anxiety.
At some point during the historic summer of 2020, I started a creative consulting company of my own — Anecdote — built on building authentic connections between future-focused brands and communities through storytelling, while maintaining a positive impact on humans and the planet.
I packed everything and boarded a plane to Mexico, without a sentence of Spanish, building my new North American creative consultancy from Mexico City and then the Oaxacan coastline of Puerto Escondido — my favorite country in the world, and a place I will forever call home.
I also spent 21 hours in a palapa meditating through my most iconic tattoo yet ;)
My LA love story began in 2015 after a road trip through the American deserts. From a summer on a sailboat in the marina to a creative co-living house in Venice, I took every chance to come back.
With my hard-earned O1-B visa in my pocket and my newly adopted senior dog Ella by my side, I successfully transplanted my life to Venice, on a pursuit to use my creativity to make the world a better place — while having a lot of fun doing it.
For two years (2022–2024) I was the Creative Director at Ona Creative — an integrated advertising agency and productio house fully owned and operated by women — collaborating with and telling stories for some of the world's biggest brands including Nike, JD Sports, Ulta Beauty, WNBA, Converse and Team USA.
It was also at Ona that I won my first awards — two Silver Telly Awards for the U.S. Women's National Team's World Cup jersey reveal. There was no big dramatic moment, no envelope on a stage — just a quiet, proud kind of validation that the work, and everything it took to get here, had been worth it.
I sourced, mentored and guided teams of 50+ creatives & talent at once, pushing their work and challenging them to see the world through new and diverse lenses.
I left at the best moment, not the worst one.
I was burnt out. But looking back over fifteen years I could also see exactly what I'd built, and what I wanted next — to stay in a state of impact, and to take everything those campaigns taught me and point it at something of my own.
So I went back to being an entrepreneur. I spent the last two years helping my family, and building the projects that follow.
Right after I left, a free ticket to Burning Man fell into my lap — my first time on the playa. I showed up completely as myself, and somewhere out in that desert I was given my playa name — Disco Dolly. Burning Man cracked something open: it lit up my personal practice as a reflective artist and gave shape to a vision I'd been circling — to sparkle harder, moving through everything with joy, authenticity, and impact.
I first dreamed up Tropical Trash the very first time I lived in Puerto Escondido — so when I flew back down to renew my US visa, something clicked into place. It started as a living social and eco art experiment: my solution for cleaning up the trash caused by tourism on the world's best surf beaches, and turning into something fun and relevant for the surf community, while also having real impact.
Then I met my business partner Taryn — and now we're building the next phase of our sustainable surf brand and canned water company, funding recycling infrastructure in the world's best surf communities.
Somewhere in all of this I kept thinking about how I could share my talent in a changing creative industry: founders, brands and creators with real problems and no way to afford a fancy creative director through an agency. I'd been on all sides of that table — in-house, agency, talent, founder — and so had my co-founder. We knew exactly what senior creative direction was worth, what the barriers to access were in and exactly how out of reach it had become.
So we built the thing we wished existed. The Creative Hotline is a 45-minute AI-assisted creative emergenct session with two senior CDs and a custom action plan in less than 24-hour — no retainer, no agency overhead, no bull shit. I designed the brand, built the site, generated the entire cast of characters in AI, and engineered the ai workshop system it runs on.
Home base is Venice, California. Second home is Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca. Remote by default, on set when it counts.
What I'm good at is holding a big vision — and seeing every piece that has to come together to make it real, and every person who has to make those pieces. Most ideas don't live in one format: a campaign might be a film, a set of stills, a store takeover and a product at once, and it has to read as one thought in all of them.
Then I direct the people. Directors, photographers, designers, editors, fabricators — I hire people better than me at their thing and keep the whole picture straight while they build it. I know the difference between a note that makes something better and one that just makes it safer.
I'm a fractional creative director and brand consultant. I run creative direction, production and strategy for brands, founders and creators who need someone senior in their corner without hiring a whole department.
I'm obsessed with what I do for a living. Fifteen years in and storytelling is still my favourite thing.
I stepped back for a while — my own projects, my family, myself. That did what it needed to do.
Now I'm ready to jump back in and make some big moves.
I like a challenge. The bigger the better.
Manifesting in 2026
Five companies, three continents, one throughline: I build things that make room for other people to do their best work — and I make them beautiful enough that people actually pay attention.
If you've read this far, you already know how I work. So — what are we building?