JOSH HIGGINS

A creative leader with 20+ years of global experience building teams and brands through multi-channel storytelling.

Josh is VP, Global Creative at Atlassian leading multi-disciplined Creative, Brand, Design, Ops and Production teams who work across all consumer touch points.

Previously, Josh was Global Chief Creative Officer for Reality Labs at Meta. Starting with one freelance designer in 2017, Josh built a 200+ organization of Creative Directors, Writers, Brand and Experience Designers, Creative Technologists, Producers, Program Managers, and Business Affairs responsible for strategic creative development to build and advance the Reality Labs family of brands (Quest, Portal, Ray Ban Stories) throughout all consumer touch points. This includes integrated campaigns across broadcast, out of home, retail, web, social, experiential, events, performance marketing, in-product experiences, branding, and packaging.

In his first role at Facebook/Meta, Josh co-built The Factory team. A new function and team for Facebook, this crews focus was brand and consumer marketing for Facebook Inc. Here, he led a variety of efforts from company and product identities, Facebook company brand guidelines, the personalized video program, brand campaigns, websites, print collateral, Product Marketing creative for all verticals of Facebook and online / offline creative for Facebook's annual F8 conference. Over the four years, he grew the team and processes to a high-functioning studio. Additionally, Josh helmed the Analog Research Lab and the Facebook Artist in Residence program.

In 2013 Josh concluded his role as Design Director for President Obama’s 2012 campaign. As the Design Director, Josh built and led the creative team for the historic 2012 political campaign in which the web, design, data and technology played a pivotal role. The responsibility of Josh and the team was to concept, develop, manage and deliver strategic creative and systems thinking across all touch points both online and offline. 

Before design, Josh’s first career was in music. As a Fender endorsed artist he spent over a decade recording and performing with the band, fluf. Over their time as a band, they played the first five Vans Warped tours in addition to tours with, Fugazi, Jawbreaker, Rancid, Sublime and many others. After 7 albums for both Cargo and MCA Universal Records, Josh returned to college to begin his design career.

Today, in addition to his work at Atlassian, Josh serves on the Tony Hawk Foundation Advisory Board and dedicates a percentage of his time to various social causes. Finding creative ways to support these causes has manifested into exhibits and charitable projects, like The Hurricane, So-Cal Fire and Haiti Poster Projects in addition to lecture series with photographers, designers and film makers with proceeds donated to charitable organizations and causes. With roots in both advertising and graphic design, Josh’s work has earned him national and international honors.