Event Info
While landing a full-time job is the primary goal for many early-career professionals, freelance work can be an equally viable and fulfilling pathway—particularly for careers in media. Hear from independent contractors and other freelance media workers about the risks and advantages of self-employment and how to know when you’re ready to go it alone.
About the Panelists
Maddy Bruster
Maddy Bruster is an independent graphic designer and writer based in New York City. Since 2020 she has owned and operated a design studio, IT HAS TO BE REAL, and has a range of experience collaborating with startups, small businesses, design and architecture studios, cultural institutions, artists and writers. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design from the Pratt Institute and has served on the faculty at Pratt since Spring 2025.
Justine Clay is a business coach, writer, speaker, and ADHD coach for creative freelancers and entrepreneurs. Justine’s lifelong passion for supporting creatives started as a career in talent management in NYC, where she built a reputation for managing top-tier freelance talent including art directors, creative directors, fashion illustrators, and copywriters. Seeing a need in the market to empower freelance creatives with the skills they need to position, price, and market their creative services (with or without an agent), Justine launched her coaching business in 2010 and has not looked back since.
Using her actionable Profitable by Design framework, Justine helps creative freelancers and entrepreneurs of all stripes identify and articulate their unique value and build a fulfilling, efficient, and profitable creative business.
With a fun, enthusiastic, and relatable style, Justine provides industry-specific guidance and feedback, tools, and practical next steps to help creative professionals make monumental changes in their creative business or career.
Rafael Espinal
Rafael Espinal is the Executive Director of Freelancers Union, where he leads national advocacy for the independent workforce. Since taking the helm in 2020, after a decade of public service as an elected official in the New York State Assembly and City Council, he has expanded the landmark Freelance Isn’t Free law to New York State, Illinois, and California; created the Freelance Relief Fund to support freelancers during crises; and fought for unemployment assistance for independent workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rafael also successfully advocated for the creation of New York’s first free legal clinic dedicated to independent workers and launched the Freelancers Hub, a post-pandemic coworking and resource space in Industry City, Brooklyn.
A lifelong Brooklynite and the son of Dominican immigrant union members and freelancers, Rafael remains committed to ensuring independent workers are protected, supported, and heard in today’s evolving economy.
Tim Herrera is the founder of Freelancing With Tim, a suite of educational resources designed to help journalists navigate the industry. He is also an adjunct professor at The New School, where he teaches entrepreneurial journalism and career/freelance development. He previously worked at The New York Times for six years, where he helped launch and then edited the service journalism section Smarter Living. Before that he worked as a reporter and social media producer for The Washington Post. He graduated from NYU with degrees in journalism and anthropology, and he currently lives in Denver.
Syreeta Gates didn’t find the archive—she became the archive.
Raised in South Jamaica, Queens, with a camera in one hand and a Source magazine in the other, she’s been preserving the stories we live since before she knew it could be a career. She doesn't follow blueprints — she builds them.
She earned a degree in Urban Youth Culture from Hunter College (because she invented the major) and went on to NYU for her Master’s in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation. Then? She wrote her own ticket. Gates is the founder of The Gates Preserve, a company devoted to protecting the creative record and making sure the worlds we shape outlast us.
Her work lives across mediums. She’s led archival research and produced award-winning docs including Netflix’s Ladies First, Peacock's Black Pop, The Remix: Hip Hop X Fashion, and A Ballerina’s Tale. Currently, she’s producing her first feature, Shaping the Culture—a definitive excavation of hip-hop journalism from Xerox to Twitter.
Syreeta was the first Black woman on LEGO® Masters (U.S. Season 2). Where she didn’t just build with bricks, she builtMost Incredible Studio. This creative house crafts cultural compositions and collectible artifacts, transforming memories into experiences and intellectual property (IP) into tangible form.
She also foundedYo Stay Hungry—a live culinary competition where rap meets recipes and food becomes freestyle. Because when the format doesn’t exist, she invents it.
Gates has been featured in and has been recognized by The New York Times, Vogue, Forbes, Black Enterprise, Refinery29, Red Bull, and more. Her work lives on the page in books such as Fresh Fly Fabulous, BLK MKT Vintage, Stand Up!, The Quarter-Life Breakthrough and Creating Innovators.
Whether it’s a kit, a keynote, a documentary, or a dinner, Syreeta is a visionary, archival thinker, and cultural conductor. Her north star is always the same: How do we make memory visible? How do we create what’s missing? And how do we build a future worth remembering?