Welcome to In Her Words, New York Festivals Lady Liberty’s monthly interview series celebrating women innovators across the industry. As part of the Lady Liberty Leadership Program, the series offers audiences an opportunity to connect with the voices, ideas, and experiences shaping today’s creative landscape through thoughtful conversations, personal reflections, and an evolving monthly focus.
Meet Amy Cavajal, Founder at Fulltank Studio.
Amy Carvajal has spent more than two decades shaping the creative industry through innovation, collaboration, and inclusion. Known for blending technology with marketing, product design, and brand identity, her work has earned more than 100 industry honors, including recognition as one of Campaign’s Most Inspiring Women in 2024.
From 2020 to 2024, Amy served as the first Chief Creative Officer at Code and Theory, where she built and led a global creative team of more than 150 people. In 2024, she founded Fulltank Studio, a creative practice focused on helping brands navigate complexity through strategic design and transformation.
A passionate advocate for increasing female leadership across creative and business industries, Amy believes curiosity, creativity, and purpose-driven thinking are catalysts for meaningful change.
Lady Liberty: What’s something about you that isn’t widely known, but really shapes who you are or what drives you?
Amy Carvajal: Something that really drives me, is I like the messy middle, when something is there but hasn’t come into focus yet. I love the process of peeling back the layers until the sharper truth reveals itself. Helping people see and believe what was already there, yet clearer, sharper, and more alive is what drives me. I guess you could say I’m deeply energized by potential.
Lady Liberty: What does creativity mean to you today, personally, and professionally?
Amy Carvajal: Creativity is how I make sense of the world. It is curiosity, pattern recognition, feeling, and most importantly, taste. And the willingness to stay with something long enough for it to become true. You have to believe in creativity because at the highest level, it represents a very new perspective. It can be a powerful force for moving things forward. We are in a moment where there is more output, but not necessarily more meaning. So, creativity to me is becoming more important. It is the element that gives work depth and distinction.
Lady Liberty: How is AI changing the way you approach creativity? And where do you draw the line between it as a tool and your own creative thinking?
Amy Carvajal: AI is incredibly useful for momentum. It can accelerate exploration, sharpen output, and help us create. But it does not know what matters, and it does not have taste. It can widen the field, but it cannot choose the truth. That comes from a lived experience, instinct, and judgment. So the line for me is intention. When AI helps me think more clearly, it is useful. When it starts replacing the hard human work of originality and meaning making, the work becomes weaker. Ai is helping us create things we could not before, but creativity still needs a person with a point of view behind it.