Meet Sarah Unger: Co-Founder & Partner, CULTIQUE

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sarah Unger and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sarah, how does your business help the community?
By helping clients navigate the winds of change, we’re often engaged on tricky, important issues such as inclusion and representation, responsibility of tech brands, or helping the entertainment industry better address mental health issues to name a short few. Our role is to make meaning of the chaotic and contradictory cultural shifts in ways both big and small – be it how companies are run or how an individual piece of content gets made. It’s very satisfying to have that kind of ripple effect from your daily work. This last year really proved our thesis that a company’s internal culture must continually be in alignment with the external culture.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
The last year has been humbling and reinforced the idea of approaching life with an open mind and open heart. This version of working, for a neophile, adventurer, occasional introvert, and explorer, allows me to be the fullest expression of myself as a person. As cultural observers, we are in many ways operating like Jane Goodall, so being distributed and remote enabled our powers of observation and sharpened our perspective.

The biggest win of the last year was the impact to our business credibility and growth, especially as we spun out as CULTIQUE, a new venture of our parent company. Pre-pandemic, understanding the zeitgeist might have been a nice-to-have for a big brand. Now it’s a must-have: Helping clients understand how profoundly and quickly the world was changing became imperative for any business that wants to succeed today. I don’t see that ever changing.

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.
I’m a neophile, so I’d use the visit as an excuse to try out new things together in the area — there’s always so much to discover. My defaults would likely be sunrise or sunset hikes in Malibu, drives in my Jeep Rubicon through Topanga Canyon, and secretly stunning strip-mall sushi. If we had enough time, I’d coast up to Santa Ynez and get some of the CA wine experience too. It’s hard not to smile on a vineyard.

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?
My CULTIQUE team is the lifeblood of my success: Linda, my fearless biz partner but also dear friend, Megan, our analyst extraordinaire and fellow Virgo sister, and Lena, our coordinator who started the role virtually and has blown us away with her prowess. We also have a coalition of like-minded cultural explorers who are part of our CULTIQUE network. We all talk every day about cultural changes. These people, and our radically fluid, honest, and trusting team approach make the work incredibly enjoyable even when it’s an intense pace.

Website: cultique.co

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahjaneunger/?hl=en

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarahjaneunger?lang=en

Other: https://www.instagram.com/cultique.co/?hl=en