As Executive Creative Director at Vice Media, Thalia Mavros led the launch of numerous successful platforms – from music site Noisey to Motherboard, Munchies and The Creators Project. 

But in 2013, she was feeling frustrated. Vice had long positioned itself as an outsider brand – an alternative to mainstream media with an unconventional approach to journalism – but as the company had grown, Mavros felt it had strayed from its founding values.

“[At the start] it was like we were this band of misfits trying to do things differently and with passion – things that we believed in, rather than what the world told us we were supposed to do. But then a lot of that changed and it became [about] a very male – a very white, male hipster – take on the world,” she tells CR. “We had made good strides moving into art and tech with The Creators Projects … but there was a female empowerment that I just wasn’t seeing.”