Work in Progress with Charlotte Rubesa
Charlotte Rubesa is a Comms Strategy Director at Wieden+Kennedy London, shaping how ideas travel for some of the most loved global brands. She’s also the founder and editor of Quiet Media, a print-first publication exploring how we spend our attention in an overstimulated world. Born in Canada, raised in Belgium, with Croatian and Dutch roots, she brings an international perspective to both her strategic work and editorial vision.
What are you working on right now?
I am soon launching my zine Quiet Media that I’ve been working on for the past year!
It was founded on the belief that our attention is our most valuable resource, and that it should be treated with care. It's the first physical 'thing' I've ever made, so there's been a real learning curve, but also something deeply satisfying about holding an idea in your hands. What’s exciting too is the ecosystem I can dream up.
Beyond the publication itself, I'm hosting a launch event in London, running a workshop on the themes, and organizing a supper club for people to come together and actually talk about this stuff.
So, I am busy in the most energising way.
If you could change one thing about the world of work right now, what would it be?
I would love it if we’d change how we measure success. The working world is obsessed with speed, output, visibility, more and more, bigger and bigger. I’d love a shift towards depth: doing fewer things with more care, and making real impact with a smaller audience rather than chasing shallow reach at scale.
I would like to thank AI Slop, because I think it is partially what is getting us closer to that.
What’s giving you hope right now?
I’m loving the wave of analog!
Writing letters, keeping physical calendars, intimate supper clubs on the rise etc. Of course in some places it’s swinging into an extreme of deleting apps, and throwing phones into the sea but we know the pendulum always needs to hit the other extreme before it settles into balance. It feels like a lot of creativity has moved from “trying to go viral” to trying to be meaningful, and that gives me a lot of hope.
Work in progress is a celebration of the effort and mindset required to make real change exist.
The most important jobs are never done and great work happens somewhere in the messy middle, where its all too easy to give up. But optimism is a pragmatic choice we make daily, so if you’re navigating change and want a thinking partner along the way, explore how we work.