Today we’d like to introduce you to Leko Ritchie
Hi Leko, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I grew up with tennis being my main focus in life. I loved everything about the sport — the discipline, independence, strategy, emotional intelligence, mental and physical strength, friendships…the list goes on. The sport taught me a lot about myself and how important it is to work hard to get to where you wanna be, regardless if thats doing things you do and don’t want to do. I believe that if there is a will, there is a way. After I quit playing tennis in college due to wanting to start a new chapter in my life with a clean slate, I still wanted to be close to sport and the tenacious mentality that all athletes have. I had a mentally challenging few years in college due to past traumas and poor behaviors, and overall a bad mental health that began to envelope in my life. However, I think this challenge was a blessing in disguise because now I advocate for mental health and have turned my pain into a beautiful community where people can connect and be vulnerable with one another on social media. I started creating content on instagram around mental health to break the stigma and build a safe space where people can talk openly about things that we all as humans face. I fell in love with wanting to understand people and what makes them tick, what makes them who they are, why they dislike/like certain things, and that’s how I landed on creative strategy. I built an amazing network of people I admire and respect and have had opportunities to intern at ad agencies like Laundry Service and one I’ll be starting soon (name under wraps for now) supporting accounts in Taco Bell and Burt’s Bees, as well as working at Nike in Amsterdam where I got to reconnect with the sport world. I’m still in my undegrad studies and graduating this June, but very excited to see what comes next.
Achievements:
3.9 GPA at UC Davis graduating June 2024
Nike Internship in Marketing for a Year at Amsterdam during Sophomore – Junior year of Undergrad
Laundry Service internship as a strategist in New York City
Aspiring creative director with strategic expertise
Tennis athlete (won CIF San Diego section with sister, Lesa Ritchie, during highschool
Content creator with 100k impressions bi-weekly around the mental health and navigating the 20s space.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Definitely not. My mental health has been the biggest set back, where past traumas really brought out the worst in me. I had to leave Amsterdam early because I was just in a really dark place and couldn’t handle my mental issues and situating in a new country at the same time. It was a lot. I was self-sabotaging my relationships, my career, my health, and it was just a dark time. Thankfully, my Nike internship had a therapy/counseling program so I started going to therapy and taking medication to help me get back on my two feet, and I’ve been feeling way better since.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am an aspiring creative strategist by day and content creator by night. I also love reading books in anthropology, psychology, self-help, and human behavior during my free time. Having experiences at my dream companies and living outside of the US makes me excited to get back out of the country to further my career and learn about more different people all over the world.
How do you think about luck?
I didn’t come from a well-off background and also didn’t know anyone in the industry that I wanted to go into when I first started my career. I pretty much had to start from point 0. Initially, I was beating myself up about it and found it as a sort of “bad luck,” but now I see it as good luck because the struggles taught me how to figure things out on my own terms, to be a student 24/7, and to share the knowledge that I learned so far with people who come from a similar situation. I think my upbringing taught me to work with what I got, and that there is so much beauty in starting things from scratch. I’m a huge believer that life is really what you make it.
Pricing:
- Creative Strategy / Brand Strategy service: 25$ hour
- Content Creation: 1 Video =500$ – 1 Photo – $250
- Social strategy services: 25$
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lekoritchie.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lekoritchie/
Image Credits
Noah Fayyazuddin – photography credits
