Hayley Grundy
Describing Hayley Grundy as Antonym’s Business Development Manager is a staggering understatement. Hayley is the right hand to everyone on our team, at all times, in every capacity. In her words, she rules with “an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove,” and is masterful at maintaining efficiency, focus, and ease for our team and clients. Hayley is our operational and spiritual Mary Poppins.
She is friendly, kind, and caring as a leader, able to bring all of that goodness to the table while also being a sharp shooter and an excellent negotiator. She supports us, corrals us, encourages us, and knows the exact right amount of sugar to make the medicine go down.
Hayley has rich (and vastly entertaining) experience in the art world, and that sensibility translates precisely to our creative work. She understands the commerce of creativity, supporting our team and clients' creative goals, alongside the business imperatives driving our collaboration. Her sharp, analytical business mind dovetails with a deep love for creativity and art.
We also appreciate how immediately and clearly she sees solutions to problems. When you're working with a big creative team, on big projects, with big stakes, it can feel overwhelming. You're living in emotion. Nobody wants to disappoint anybody, and we all want the work to be up to par, to keep people happy.
The minute you bring a problem to Hayley, she immediately sees a clear, actionable solution that acknowledges those emotions, but keeps the focus on goals and objectives. That is a lot of the behind-the-scenes work at an agency, and she does it effortlessly, which engenders so much trust from our clients.
She understands the vision for Antonym completely. She is never afraid to give sharp feedback, and is always thinking for us—solving problems we haven't even thought of. That long view is also in part informed by her love of history and architecture, and appreciation of the time it takes to build something special (a point we're reminded of on blustery, rainy NYC days as we gaze at the sunny background from her office in Sicily).
More than all of this is how deeply compelling and thoughtful she is, a compassionate soul with few equals. We all trust her implicitly as the person running the show, helping lead Antonym in a human-centered, people-first way. That's how we try to work and live every day, and without Hayley, that simply would not be possible.