Tina Caye is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Clover Collective and a Platinum award-winning creative leader, helping businesses define and communicate with their target audience. She has established creative approaches that allow for peak team performance in a range of sectors from healthcare to government services, concentrating on the development of unique brand identities, marketing communications, design, interactive media, video, and advertising.
Below are highlights of our interview with Tina:
Describe who you are as a person, inside and outside of the workplace.
I am a person who values authenticity above all else. I crave adventure and novelty. I have an awesome husband who is in the Army (Brian) and we have a 2.5-year-old daughter (Quinlin). I love to crack jokes and make a fool of myself. I believe in being a leader that fosters inclusion, wholeness, and lifts the team to reach their potential and goals both professionally and personally.
Describe your background and what did you do before you founded Clover Collective?
From a small rural town of 750 people, in a home filled with poverty, addiction, and abuse, I have always been driven to create a future for myself that was bigger, bolder, and better than where it started.
I vowed to break barriers, push harder, and redefine greatness while keeping people and authenticity at the very forefront of all that I do.
I was the second in my family to graduate high school and the first in my family to go to college. I stayed up late writing for every scholarship and grant I could find and applied to only one college – the dream-Savannah College of Art and Design, where I studied Motion Media (Broadcast Design) and Performing Arts. After graduating, I freelanced for a while, doing everything from graphic design to video editing. I worked for a couple of small marketing and advertising agencies and then moved in-house for a green energy company, went into healthcare IT branding, led a team of interactive designers at Booz Allen Hamilton, and then moved to Capital One’s Small Business brand team.
Tell us the inception story of Clover Collective.
While leading these in-house teams, I worked with countless creative agencies that would just throw creative work “over the fence” with less collaboration and transparency than was needed for real success. So, Clover was born with community, collaboration, and transparency at its core.
Clover is here to see empathy and emotion brought to life. In an industry full of tired clichés and rhetoric, we strive to get to the authenticity that drives human experience and build brands that resonate.
What has been your biggest learning since becoming an entrepreneur?
Some things I already knew at my core, but have really come to be bigger than I imagined:
- The path to success is winding, varied, and never what you think it will be.
- No one achieves anything alone.
- Gratitude does not mean settling. You can find gratitude for where you are while striving for what’s next. Like everything in life, it’s not black and white.
How do you motivate people to go the extra mile?
My leadership style is that of vulnerability and a willingness to admit my own shortcomings and mistakes in order to create a space where people feel they can do the same. One of my favorite sayings is, “5 minutes of an uncomfortable conversation in order to have years of an authentic connection”. My team knows that I will create space for the best person for the job to do it regardless of title or “expertise” so that we can all achieve together.
Here’s a quote from an employee at Clover about Tina’s leadership style.
“There’s nothing better than her uncontainable excitement when you have a good idea that never occurred to her. Nothing but praise and enthusiasm if someone presents a valid challenge to one of her own ideas. By having a solid awareness of her own strengths and weaknesses, Tina is able to identify and celebrate the strengths of those around her.”
What gets you up in the morning? What motivates you?
My husband is a never-ending beacon of encouragement and cheerleading that I can rely on in even the darkest days of entrepreneurship. He doesn’t let me give up on myself. My 2.5 year-old daughter lights up a room with a “hello” and some days that’s enough to let me know she’s cheering me on. One of the biggest reasons I do this is to show her that women have a special leadership value to bring to this world and that our superpowers lie at the intersection of strength and vulnerability.
Kindly describe how you will specifically know what success looks like for you.
Success is the ability to look back where you’ve been and recognize how far you’ve come while looking to the future, knowing even greater things are in store. Gratitude plus the ambition to keep pushing is the secret sauce.
What is some of the advice you give to aspiring women leaders who see disability as a career barrier?
Much like everything else that makes each of us unique, disabilities allow individuals to have a different perspective and point of view on challenges. Solving problems differently is how we attack innovation and create change. We need diversity in all aspects, and perspective based on ability is a key change-maker.
What does “performance culture” mean to you?
While performance and achievements are important, I believe looking only at these metrics is short-sighted and can lead to burnout and toxicity among team members.
I try to balance this with a culture of growth and learning. We are curious, transparent, and vulnerable enough to be able to admit gaps in knowledge or skills and ask to learn from someone knowledgeable. This leads to trying things, failing fast, and learning together. All the while, we push to gather feedback from teammates and leaders who have become trusted colleagues because they, too, are able and willing to be vulnerable about their opportunities.
I believe this is a more long-term solution that leads to success up and down the organization while keeping the team healthy and working in concert and egos at a minimum.
What are your future plans to sustain Clover Collective?
Growth. We are in a high-growth mode right now looking to triple our client portfolio this year. From there, I have a vision for Clover to be an impactful community for women leaders and creatives. Personally, I’ll be looking for more speaking engagements to share our culture and our point of view. As we look to grow, we’ll be engaging in partnerships with other organizations that align with our vision and mission. The future is bright for our team. Don’t sleep on us.
Website: www.clovercollective.com
