Stronger leader, sharper creative: Motherhood was never the problem for Merlee Jayme

For Filipina creative leader Merlee Jayme, motherhood was never separate from creative leadership — it was the force that reshaped it. 

Before she became “Chairmom,” Merlee had already been practicing a quieter kind of leadership: one that didn’t live in boardrooms or award stages, but in the small, repeating rhythms of raising four daughters while building a creative career.

There was a time when her world, like many young creatives, revolved around her profession: always thinking about the next promotion, the next campaign, or the next recognition. But motherhood interrupted that center of gravity. While it didn’t diminish her ambition, it redistributed it. Suddenly, success had to make room for school activities, shared dinners, early mornings, and the unpredictable demands of growing children.

Over time, that shift became something deeper than balance and morphed into integration. The discipline of deadlines began to sit alongside bedtime stories, creative instinct started to sound like parental intuition, and leadership, once defined by output, began to take on a different weight —measured in presence, in protection, and in the ability to shape not just ideas, but people.

Merlee reflects on how motherhood shifted her perspective from personal ambition to creating space for care, presence, and purpose — values that would later shape her leadership style as “Chairmom.”

“What I realized when I first became a mom was that it was not just me anymore. When I was a copywriter struggling in this industry, when I was single, it was all about me — how I would move up, what I should do to win more awards, to earn more. When you become a mom, suddenly your perspective changes,” Merlee told adobo Magazine. 

“You become a little selfless. If I have more children, there’s less of me. I have four, so more and more of my time is given to them. I see myself like a cheerleader—I try to inspire, give a little word of advice, but not anymore like how I was when I was single.”

Home is where the heart is

Merlee has been a mother for over three decades, raising four creative daughters. They are Issel Jayme, a Native Creative Director at The Huddle Room; Inez Jayme, a Regional Senior Copywriter at Publicis Groupe Singapore; Sofia Jayme, a Copywriter at Propel Manila; and Sabina Jayme, an Accounts Associate at Porters Group Inc.

At home, Merlee frames creativity not as a fixed talent or an occasional burst of inspiration, but as a lived discipline, sustained through curiosity, practice, and values. For her, creativity stays alive when a person refuses to become passive — a mindset she constantly instills in her daughters.

Raising four daughters, Sofia, Inez, Sabina and Issel, while navigating the demanding world of advertising shaped Merlee’s belief that leadership must be grounded in empathy and responsibility.

“For example, if there’s a new game, a new show, a new movie, I try to bring everyone’s excitement to that, because that’s where you get inspiration. Whenever I’m asked what I do when I have a creative block, I say I never had that because I always look for the next thing. I teach that to [my children] — professionally and at home.” 

Alongside curiosity, she also emphasizes integrity and discipline as non-negotiable foundational elements. She believes creativity without discipline is incomplete. It becomes unstructured play without direction or impact. 

“Always be honest. You don’t have to step over everyone’s toes just to get ahead. There’s responsibility, respect for others, discipline. Don’t be late — respect other people’s time,’ di ba. Creativity without discipline is nothing — it’s just play. But when you put creativity with discipline, it progresses and shines better,” Merlee said. 

The making of a Chairmom

In her decades of working, Merlee founded The Misfits Camp, the first-ever safe space in the world to assess and upskill neurodivergent and deaf creative adults, preparing them to work professionally in the creative industry. Right then, she founded Jayme Headquarters, a social enterprise creative agency that provides actual workplace experience for neurodivergent creatives. 

Before this, Merlee was an advertising veteran and a creative leader. She was Dentsu McGarryBowen Global Co-president and led Dentsu International – Asia Pacific as Chief Creative Officer, elevating it to greater heights by winning the ADFEST Network of the Year 2020 and 2022, Spikes Network of the Year 2021, Cannes Lions Regional Network of the Year 2021, and AD STARS Network of the Year 2021.

The title “Chairmom” reflects Merlee Jayme’s commitment to leading with both strategic vision and maternal care, integrating family life with agency leadership.

Her work pushes the boundaries of insight and innovation, which inspires creative collaboration. Having won major awards, including the Philippines’ only Cannes Lions Grand Prix, she was among the eight women in the world’s top 100 Chief Creative Officers by the 2019 Drum Global Ranking. In March 2025, she was inducted as an ADFEST Lotus Legend for her contributions to the creative industry in the Asia-Pacific region. In the same year, she was named the inaugural Agency Leader of the Year at the 19th Asia-Pacific Tambuli Awards. 

With all of these accolades, Merlee believes that being a “Chairmom” is more than a personal branding choice — it is a deliberate reframing of what leadership can look like when it is grounded in both professional responsibility and lived motherhood.

“Being a chairperson is about direction, inspiration, vision, and culture. But I wanted something more personal. I’m a mom of four girls and that’s something rare in this industry because it’s so hard to be both a mom and a creative one with long hours and late nights,” she explained. 

“It’s a reminder of my responsibility at home and how I integrate that with leading an agency. You can’t balance it — something has to give. So I chose to integrate both.” 

That integration is practical. She reorganized her life to make proximity and presence possible — moving her home closer to her workplace, being present for her daughter’s homework, sharing dinners with her family, putting her children to bed, and then returning to work afterward. It is a structure that resists the idea that leadership requires absence from family life.

On a deeper level, her title as a Chairmom is a form of self-accountability. Every time she sees the title attached to her name, it reminds her that she is operating in dual responsibility, leading an agency while actively showing up as a mother. It also functions as a moral checkpoint, where decisions are no longer evaluated solely by business outcomes but also through knowing what it means for her children and what it signals to the people she leads.

Raising creatives

Merlee’s leadership philosophy is rooted in a consistent thread of principles, including discipline, authenticity, and the refusal to take shortcuts. These are values that are both taught and lived within their family and creative practice.

At the core of her parenting and leadership approach is a strong emphasis on hard work over convenience. 

Merlee believes motherhood made her more selfless, shifting her focus from personal ambition toward creating a life centered on care and responsibility.

“When I listen to them and how disciplined they are with their teams in school, they hate teammates who don’t do their own work,” she explained.

For her daughters, the expectation is not perfection through delegation, but ownership of the process. 

“They prefer the long route — the process of making things perfect… they have that discipline to finish, and it’s not shortcuts — it’s hard work.”

Beyond discipline, Merlee’s approach to raising creative thinkers is deeply participatory. Her daughters describe a home where imagination is constantly activated. 

Creativity was embedded in their everyday life, according to Sofia, Merlee’s second youngest. Their mom was the type to make her own bedtime stories — creating characters and the whole storyline, one episode at a time. But for her, these storytelling rituals are more than bonding moments. They have helped shape how she thinks. 

“She really created an environment at home where anything is possible,” Sofia added. 

Sabina, the youngest, on the other hand, highlighted how creativity was expressed through freedom of exploration. 

“She was always open to trying new things — even now,” she said, describing a mother who remains playful, curious, and unafraid of experimentation. 

This also rings true for Inez, who said that Merlee has a youthful energy that keeps her curious and open to trying something new.

“She’s always game to discover new artists, explore new places, watch the latest shows, or give a new workout a try. And she’s genuinely interested in these things too. She’s not someone who’s closed off to what’s up and coming,” Inez said.

Issel, meanwhile, emphasized that while their mother introduced them to creativity, she never imposed her industry on them. 

“She taught us creative things, but she never asked us to enter this field. It just so happened we all enjoyed storytelling. People often think she helped pave the way for us, but we never really asked for help. Instead, she taught us how to navigate our own paths and tell our stories in ways that are different from hers. She encouraged us to write our own stories, and that’s something people aren’t aware about.”

She also added that her mother’s love is a form of care that is highly attentive, detail-oriented, and individualized, where love and leadership are expressed not through grand gestures, but through deep awareness of each person’s identity and interests. She also highlighted that their mother’s care is consistent and proactive, where the latter doesn’t wait for problems to surface; instead, she regularly checks in and ensures everyone is doing well. 

“The way she cares is in the details—she knows the little things about you. I think it’s the same at work. She knows those details about people,” Issel shared. 

Inez echoed this.

“Her superpower is always knowing exactly what advice to give, exactly when you need it most. And it’s the kind of wisdom that only comes from years of experience. Whether it’s at home or at work, she really takes the time to listen and understand people. She cares deeply, and you’ll definitely feel that.”

This balance between guidance and independence extends into how Merlee sees leadership in relation to neurodiversity and creative work. Reflecting on her daughters’ influence on her thinking, Merlee shared how they shaped her understanding of audiences and inclusion. 

“I’m very lucky because I have millennials and Gen Zs in the house, I learned from them.” 

For Merlee, parenting was never separate from creativity — it became one of the ways she continuously practiced imagination, storytelling, and empathy.

Their presence at home became an informal but constant focus group for her work. More importantly, they challenged her thinking on the industry itself, especially when she began studying neurodiversity.

“If we want to understand people in this industry, we have to understand neurodiversity,” she explains, linking personal curiosity to professional responsibility.

When asked about the values she hopes they carry forward, Merlee underscores ambition and competitiveness, reframing them as constructive forces. 

“Everybody in this family is competitive. We hate losing,” she said candidly. But this competitiveness is paired with high standards and discipline rather than ego. Her daughters affirm this, noting how professionalism is protected even within family dynamics. 

Ambition, for Merlee, should never be downplayed, especially for women. She believes that “ambition for women is not a bad word — it’s noble. Wanting to win in life is something I love instilling.”

Ultimately, what emerges from both mother and daughters is a shared value system built on authenticity and effort.

“One of the most important things she’s taught us, and also young creatives, is authenticity. It’s easy to tell when someone is faking being creative,” Sofia said.  “In our line of work, the output speaks for itself. She always tells us to be ourselves, do our best, and it will show. Ideas have to come from you — you have to put in the work. It’s easy to tell when you don’t. Parang she really instilled in us that there are no shortcuts. Everything will be hard, so you have to put in the work and be authentic.”

Through their reflections, Merlee’s philosophy becomes clear, indicating that creativity is not inherited passively — it is trained, protected, and lived daily. It is also shaped at home through stories and experimentation, and reinforced in the workplace through discipline, integrity, and an uncompromising commitment to doing the work properly.

Expanding motherhood into mentorship

Merlee’s role as a mother extends far beyond her family — most visibly through The Misfits Camp and JAYME Headquarters.

The idea to build a creative safe space for neurodiverse talent began with a simple observation of her nephew, who is on the autism spectrum, designing digital games at the age of 12. This incident led her to study neurodiversity and led to a larger realization: nearly half of neurodiverse individuals are creatively inclined, yet many are left without opportunities after education.

For example, research shows that nearly half of all creative professionals identify as neurodivergent, with conditions like ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and dyspraxia shaping how they think, create, and communicate. But the environments designed to support creativity are failing the very people who drive it, calling it a “silent crisis”  that affects “one’s retention, output, and well-being across the industry.” 

Determined to change that, Merlee built a space where different kinds of minds could not only create, but belong. 

Currently, The Misfits Camp supports over 40 individuals across the neurodiverse spectrum, including students who are nonverbal, with dyslexia or ADHD, helping them find community, purpose, and even livelihood through creative work.

“You have to focus on people who don’t have a chance right now,” she said, adding that this moment is where motherhood and mentorship fully converge. 

“With neurodiverse individuals, we don’t just develop their creativity — we help them learn how to commute, build friendships, and experience life. So mentorship and motherhood become one.” 

A different kind of legacy

Throughout the year, Merlee wanted to build a system of thinking she hopes to leave behind in creative leadership; one that prioritizes diversity, human insight, and emotional intelligence over uniformity and automation.

As a creative leader, she believes that creativity must constantly be renewed through exposure to difference. For her, seeking inspiration is not passive; it is an active responsibility of leadership.

“You should always look for new kinds of creativity everywhere. Don’t stop seeking inspiration—from different people with different perspectives.” 

Known for her advocacy of inclusivity and for creating spaces where unconventional thinkers can thrive, Merlee has long believed that creativity flourishes when diverse minds are fully seen and heard. Through her work, she continues to challenge traditional industry norms, amplifying voices that have often existed on the margins of the creative conversation.

“I always tell HR not to hire from the same schools. That’s not diversity. Hire from provincial schools, different age groups, the LGBTQ+ community, neurodiverse individuals, [because] when you bring all these voices into a room, that’s where real creativity happens,” she emphasized. 

“Now, my new source of inspiration is people—different kinds of brains, even those who don’t speak but can express ideas in other ways. You can’t take away the heart from leadership,” she added. 

Ultimately, being both strong and compassionate, disciplined yet understanding, defines her heart as a Chairmom, driving her to create spaces where people, especially those often overlooked, can thrive. This term for her is not just a title, but her way of leading, where decisions are guided not only by strategy but also by care and creativity fueled by empathy.

In Merlee’s world, motherhood isn’t a pause in leadership; it’s where its most powerful form — in her case — takes shape.

READ MORE:

Give to gain: The double invisibility of neurodivergent women

2025 APAC Tambuli Awards honors Merlee Jayme its inaugural Agency Leader of the Year award for championing purpose-driven creativity

‘There is courage in being different’: Jayme HQ Founder Merlee Jayme on embracing neurodiversity at CreativeFest 2025

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