Hi! I’m DJ.

THE SHORT STORY

Currently leading the Gen AI team at Meta as a Sr Content Design Lead. 

I’m a Cannes Lions 30 Under 30, award-winning creative director, tech startup VP, founder, social media insider with 330K+ followers, Gen-Z marketing speaker at Ad Week, App Summit, Cannes Lions, and was Mr USA 2021.

As someone who has directly experience being a digital product (aka character) within social media while running a data-driven, Gen-Z tech startup and working in advertising — I'm not only an experienced creative and strategic thinker, but proven core loop creator.

THE LONG STORY

As my portfolio link hints at I unfortunately have no musical talent whatsoever. DJ stands for Dustin James but I could probably drudge up my recorder from 3rd grade and play some wicked hot cross buns if it came down to it.

After moving to NYC the day after graduating, my career ran in a comedic parallel with the storyline of Mad Men — the show that motivated a childhood dream of mine, to go from growing up in the midwest to working in NYC ad agencies, to becoming reality.

Having started at McCann and GREY, the show’s two main namesakes, I pivoted into the digital side of advertising at AKQA, working with Nike, Maserati, and Beats by Dre, where I would go on to win a few shiny objects including Gold Clios, Addys, and other industry awards.

Collecting all of the advertising hardware I wanted, I left the agency world and was a founding team member of a marketing tech startup as VP, Marketing, where I entered the industry speaker circuit, giving talks at conferences like Ad Week, Cannes Lions, and App Summit on viral marketing for the next generation.

After boomeranging back to AKQA to lead the launch of Nike’s app across numerous Asia Pacific and Latin American markets while also launching P&G’s first metaverse experience at CES, I initially joined Meta’s Reality Labs team where I worked on virtual reality before pivoting to the brave new world of AI.