What’s it like to work at a creative agency? Ask Sarah Allen – a USC Iovine and Young Academy alumna who holds a director title at CASE Agency in New York City. Allen has worked with clients in the beauty space to build their brands and create direct to consumer experiences, putting her creative touch on everything from packaging to campaign production to e-commerce strategy. Partnering with some of the biggest names in the game (ahem, Lady Gaga) she’s taken her love of beauty and business and turned it into a dream job that allows her to bring brands to life.

Not everyone’s first project on a job entails launching a new Selena Gomez product, but for Allen, that's life at an agency. After a post-graduation stint at a female-founded company supporting startups, Allen reconnected with the company she had interned at during her senior year at IYA, the place she’s called her professional home since 2020. CASE is a full-service agency focused on lifestyle and wellness brands, whose roster of beauty industry heavy-hitter clients include Clinique, e.l.f. Cosmetics, and Summer Fridays. Allen has always been fashion and beauty-obsessed and design-oriented, so developing creative strategy for innovative brands she believes in fulfills both her interests and her expertise. 

“What inspires me most about my work are the amazing entrepreneurs and brand founders I get to support. It's so amazing to collaborate with creative people and help turn their vision into a living breathing brand,” she shares. 

Allen kicked off her CASE career working on developing Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty, and since then she’s gone on to support a variety of high-profile celebrity lifestyle brands, from Gwen Stefani’s GXVE to Haus Labs by Lady Gaga. She’s carved out a niche for herself in the space, using her business savvy, design skills, and communication prowess to coordinate with developers and connect with clients to ensure she’s representing their concept in the best way possible. E-commerce is a specialty of Allen, so she’s been focusing on that side of development in the past year. 

Editorial design, coding, and the digital world drew Allen in high school, but when she found out about IYA, she realized she could quench her thirst for business and still learn what she wanted to, without settling on a singular track like computer science or art. 

“It kind of just all lined up perfectly,” she recalls. 

IYA allowed Allen to immerse herself in classes she was passionate about, like UX design. She notes that being a part of the school’s very first cohort propelled her into a “leap of faith” mentality that ended up working out for the better. The “well-rounded” education she experienced got her to the unique and exhilarating job she’s thrived in. Of course, being a devoted beauty enthusiast doesn’t hurt either. 

“I think that if you can find an agency that has a niche that you are really passionate about, that’s going to make things 10 times more exciting in the projects you’re working on,” she says, offering her advice for those looking to follow in her professional footsteps. 

For students curious about working at an agency, Allen feels like the path is a natural fit for IYA grads because of the multidimensional nature of the environment. How and what she learned throughout college directly impacts her career today. 

“When you go into the agency world, it’s almost like going into consulting for business students, right? You really have exposure to so many different types of projects and are executing on so many different types of projects. Now I feel l have knowledge in how to create packaging mechanicals or what you need to get a half a million dollar shoot done or how to build a direct to consumer website. You get a real taste of so many different things. And that’s what I’ve loved about joining an agency right after graduation.”

Not everyone’s first project on a job entails launching a new Selena Gomez product, but for IYA alum Sarah Allen, that's life at a creative agency.

“What inspires me most about my work are the amazing entrepreneurs and brand founders I get to support. It's so amazing to collaborate with creative people and help turn their vision into a living breathing brand,” she shares. 

The Beauty of Branding: Life at a Creative Agency