Meet Kacie Lyn Martinez | Creative Facilitator & Multidisciplinary Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kacie Lyn Martinez and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kacie Lyn, how has your perspective on work-life balance evolved over time?
In a past life, I was driving to a conference with my colleagues and we went around answering the question: What’s your ideal job? Among the list were Executive Director, Head of Product, COO, and when my turn came, I gave the only answer I had words for: I want to make beautiful things.

For most of my career, I pretzeled myself into jobs that utilized my competencies, and ultimately left me with poor boundaries skills, overworked, and burnt out. But what I really wanted the whole time was to be valued and respected as someone who made beautiful things with people.

As it does, an experience with death shook me deeply. I began asking myself: who’s driving this life? I realized it was my ego and focus on external validation and status, and as an actively grieving person, I was suffocating in the places it was leading me to.

I’m no longer looking for a balance between work and life, because it’s all life. Instead my decision is to approach everything in a heart-forward way: work, art, relationships, body, money. For me that means finding and cultivating the beauty in all those parts of life, even the mundane every-day aspects. The beauty I seek to make is in life itself, whereby all parts of living is the art.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I use art and creative activities with workplaces and communities to move people from isolated and fatigued to embodied, empathetic, and connected. I do this because there’s something alchemic when we have collective experiences of wonder and curiosity without judgement.

As a creative facilitator and multidisciplinary artist, I have shepherded collaborative creative activations for over a thousand people across the US. Something unique is that I used to be a COO and business strategist. It comes from years of running companies and non-profits that I’ve been able to test out methods to develop creativity as muscle memory and build strong, empathetic teams. I started my own company doing this because my real talents lie in holding space and guiding people, not in operational infrastructure and strategy. Plus, I felt I could make more cultural impact as a trusted outsider compared to an internal leader.

But there’s definitely resistance to creative engagements. Many of us are fearful of creativity because our inner critic tells us we are already bad at it or art is not for us. Others are dismissive of art as wasteful, unproductive, or a nice-to-haves.

Not only does the research support play as a regular part of our lives and work, but I’ve seen it time and again: when we step outside our comfort zones with peers, we are transformed into more aligned, empathetic, and receptive people. Art-forward activities offer us an easy way to stretch into risk taking, outside-the-box thinking, and seeing those around us as humans first. That’s my calling—creating spaces, tools, and workshops that bring us closer to individual and collective actualization.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We would begin with marranitos (Mexican gingerbread pigs) from any local panderia (Mexican bakery), and enjoy them and warm beverages while we walked through the marsh of Fairview Park in Costa Mesa. They’ve done a wonderful job cultivating California indigenous plants, and I would share all I knew about the local wildlife. We’d grab sandwiches at A Market in Newport Beach — they have a menu I dream about — and we would walk around the Sherman Gardens in Corona Del Mar. There’s always a half dozen hummingbirds excited to say hello, and a stunning succulent garden which some of the largest cacti I’ve ever seen. I always say that if my brain were a house the Sherman Garden’s is what that house would look like.
Other highlights our of trip would be mountain biking through El Moro Canyon, walking the beach at Crystal Cove State Park, and snorkeling in a Laguna Beach cove. I have a roadrunner friend with a funny black hat in Irvine’s Bommer Canyon I would introduce you to. We’d split a torta from Guadalajara Birrieria, enjoy wine at Semi-Tropic Wines, and I’d cook us loads of food. My tuna steak huaraches with my famous salsa verde would be high on the list.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
The works by storyteller and psychoanalyst Clarissa Este Polka continue to help me come home to myself. Not only do I love archetypes and magical realism (which for her is folklore), but I’m really fascinated by our subconscious, creativity as flow, life cycles, and how we heal from different parts of ourselves from trauma. I’m on a lifelong journey to understand how we heal, dream, and self-actualize individual and in community, and her framing and tools are so supportive in that voyage.

Website: https://kacielynmartinez.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kacielynm/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kacielynmartinez/

Other: Pinterest – https://www.pinterest.com/kacielynmartinez/