Member since December 2019
Lisa Rothstein helps leaders get their biggest ideas seen, understood, and funded — winning the buy-in that turns strategy into action.
A New Yorker cartoonist and award-winning author of Drawing Out Your Genius (2025 Axiom Business Book Award), Lisa spent 20+ years as a Madison Avenue creative director — IBM, Hanes, Unilever — before becoming the strategist Fortune 500 leaders call when the polished deck isn't landing. Her contrarian thesis: in an AI-saturated world of frictionless polish, a rough, hand-drawn visual is a trust signal — proof a real human was in the room and actually thinking. Or, as she puts it, "the worse it looks, the better it works."
She's worked with Logitech, Merck, Bayer, and Rheem on vision, change, and the co-created visual thinking that gets initiatives funded and adopted — because when people help draw it, they already own it. Lisa writes Psychology Today's only illustrated column, Proof of Humanity, chairs the San Diego chapter of the National Cartoonists Society, and holds a degree in Semiotics from Brown.
Great ideas don't die from lack of logic — they die from too much polish. In a world drowning in AI-generated decks, the boldest move in the room is a rough, hand-drawn sketch: proof a real human was there and actually thinking. In this talk, New Yorker cartoonist and award-winning author Lisa Rothstein shows leaders why imperfection is a trust signal — and how a single sketch can get an idea seen, understood, and funded. The core principle: when people help draw it, they already own it. The close is just paperwork.
Great ideas don't die from lack of logic — they die from too much polish. In a world drowning in AI-generated decks, the boldest move in the room is a rough, hand-drawn sketch: proof a real human was there and actually thinking. In this talk, New Yorker cartoonist and award-winning author Lisa Rothstein shows leaders why imperfection is a trust signal — and how a single sketch can get an idea seen, understood, and funded. The core principle: when people help draw it, they already own it. The close is just paperwork.
