Designing Resilience: Creativity, Leadership, and Building Optionality in Uncertain Times - Sabrina Depestre

In this episode of Escape Velocity Podcast, Tracey Halvorsen sits down with Sabrina Depestre, Senior Director of Enrollment Marketing at Maryland Institute College of Art, to explore how creativity, leadership, and resilience actually develop in the real world. This is a conversation about experience design disguised as a career story. From shaping fan experiences at the Miami Heat to modernizing marketing inside higher education, Sabrina reveals how creative strategy works when culture, systems, and human behavior collide. Together, Tracey and Sabrina unpack burnout as a structural issue, not a personal flaw; curiosity as a leadership discipline; and why side projects, portfolio careers, and creative sovereignty matter more than ever in an AI-accelerated world. They also confront the realities facing creative education today—from generative AI to shifting economic models—and why embracing change with ethics, clarity, and evidence beats both fear and hype. This episode is for leaders, creatives, strategists, and educators who want to understand: How creativity functions inside complex systems Why experience design is the future of brand and leadership How to build resilience without burning everything down What it actually means to stay curious in unstable times