So, What Do You Actually Do?: A Career in Business Affairs

Join Molly Baker and a business affairs leader at a creative agency who has built a career out of translating between departments, from finance to creative operations. This conversation covers what business affairs actually does, why AI is making that work more complex, and how a self-organized group at work is teaching an entire team to build their own tools. They also talk about the power of mentorship, the difference between sprint work and marathon work, and why there is no one straight path to a career you love. It is a look at what it takes to be the connective tissue that keeps a creative team moving.

MB (Molly Baker): Without telling us who you are, what's top of mind for you professionally these days?

LC (Leigh Caudill): Making sure I have the right people and the right resources focused on the right things. That's where most of my energy is going right now.

MB: How do you do that?

LC: It's a constant balance, especially as technology becomes a bigger part of the conversation. I'm always trying to find the balance between human judgment and the people who know how to use the tools well. In a creative agency, people are everything, and finding the ones who can realize a vision with the tools we have, or find new tools that help us move faster, is the biggest key.

MB: What are you really good at? Brag about yourself.

LC: Making people laugh, honestly. Professionally that shows up as making people feel supported and clear on where we're going. I tell people there are two kinds of work happening at once, a sprint and a marathon. The sprint people need things urgently, and the marathon people are the backbone saying here's what I can make happen right now and here's the bandaid while the rest is cooking. Keeping people moving, whether that's pacing the sprint or fueling the marathon, is what I think of as business affairs and creative operations support underneath everything else that's happening.

MB: So you're the marathoner?

LC: Yes. Don't ask me to sprint or create the asset, but I can definitely get you the support you need to do it well.

MB: What's been the most pivotal moment in your career?

LC: I started in finance because I was good with numbers and organization. I built a reputation for translating between the creative side and the numbers side, which became a conduit role. From there I moved into business affairs, a role I didn't even know existed, because a mentor saw my strengths and encouraged me to follow them. The biggest pivotal thing has been staying open to the idea that there isn't only one path, and being lucky enough to have people around me who saw my strengths and gave me opportunities to grow them.

MB: What relationship has been most impactful on your career?

LC: A college professor who wasn't even in my major. He saw that I was doing well in writing and told me I could pursue that alongside my major. He was a screenwriter and encouraged me to keep exploring things both in and out of school. He is still a mentor of mine today. The people who encouraged me not to close myself off to one path are the reason I've had the chance to try multiple careers, and it has only made my life richer.

MB: What decision have you made to invest in yourself that has paid off the most?

LC: Taking classes and certifications on anything I'm interested in, even when it wasn't directly tied to my role. I took a certification on how to lead and manage before I was ever in a people leading role, and it paid off later when I built a team. I took an AI certification even though I wasn't on the AI team, and that eventually led to an opportunity to help build a tool. Investing in the things you're curious about makes your role and your opportunities richer, and it comes back around eventually.

MB: Tell us who you are and what you do.

LC: I'm Lee Caudill, director of business affairs at Gale Agency.

MB: What does business affairs actually mean?

LC: Business affairs handles the legal side of creative production and mitigates risk across all of our assets. That's everything from drafting contracts and negotiating deals to working through brand slogans and making sure we have the rights and clearances to use what we create. It's our job to make sure everything produced is owned and available to use by both the client and the agency.

MB: Do you have lawyers on your team?

LC: We work closely with lawyers, though I'm not an attorney myself. We have a paralegal on my team, and we work closely with legal both at our agency and at our clients' companies.

MB: Has this work gotten easier or more complicated with AI?

LC: More complex. Most laws are written and then defined through the courts, so we're still going to see over the next few decades who really owns something written by AI, where that information came from, and how it was put together. Different states have different rules about what's used or advertised by AI, and it's changing constantly, which makes the job really dynamic.

MB: What does an average day look like?

LC: There isn't really an average day. I might have a schedule at eight and it's completely different by 8:02. Some days it's shoots and draft reviews for clients. Other days it's a call about a pitch, ballparking talent costs, or figuring out what a two day shoot or a celebrity spokesperson would cost. Sometimes it's renewals, figuring out what it costs to keep a campaign running for another year or to extend usage into a new channel. A lot of it is pulling old agreements, estimating costs, talking to agents and talent, or sitting with a team to help them think through what they need so they can realize an idea the way they want to, or find out where they can save money.

MB: It sounds like a lot of question answering, creative thinking, and problem solving.

LC: It's all of that, but I also think of it as being a creative partner from the very beginning. If a team is concepting a plan, we can flag early on that they can't use a celebrity's name outright because it implies endorsement, and offer other ways to do it so nobody falls in love with an idea that isn't actually possible. We want to be there every step of the way so people know where the lines are, what tools they have, and what things will cost, so nobody gets to the end surprised by the price tag.

MB: It sounds like your team works with a lot of different stakeholders every day. How do you build those relationships?

LC: Our company is globally dispersed, with offices in New York, Toronto, Austin, and California, so a lot of it happens online and over video calls. We have people assigned to certain accounts and regular check ins with client leads and project managers, and we make sure everyone knows the milestones and when to flag something. One of our core values at Gale is friends collaborating, and that spirit is something we try to weave into everything we do together.

MB: It sounds like getting alignment on what needs to happen and when is core to how you build trust.

LC: Yes. That's a lot to manage with a big group of people in a lot of different places needing things from you all the time. It's actually part of what the AI tool I'm building with a teammate is meant to help with, consolidating and organizing our requests so we can sort through what's high priority, what's program related, and what's closer to self serve. Making technology work smarter, not harder, is one of my favorite phrases, and I think the agencies that leverage AI strategically, not just as a blanket rollout, are the ones that are actually going to see the return over the next few years.

MB: What has your AI journey looked like, and what's helped you get to the point of building your own tool?

LC: Teamwork, honestly. A group at the agency came together organically called Gs Who Prompt, and it's grown to almost seventy or eighty of us sharing what we're building and how. Some of it is work related and some of it is personal, like something one person built to remind people to call their mom on Mother's Day. Having other people to bounce ideas off of has been essential. One of my teammates got so into building a tool that could talk to all the other tools we use that we ended up building it together. Having that group, almost like a study group, has been next level.

MB: What's something you wish you knew earlier in your career?

LC: How impactful a mentor can be. Having someone to talk to about where you want your career to go, how to approach your boss, or how to ask for a raise or a promotion makes a real difference, and some companies and bosses won't just offer that up on their own. Early on I thought if I just did good work, people would notice and opportunities would come. Once I found a mentor who genuinely advocated for me, I saw a real shift in my trajectory, and I think it would have happened sooner if I had sought that out earlier.

MB: What makes a good mentor, and what makes a good mentee?

LC: A good mentor gives it to you straight and isn't bound by ego. It helps if they understand your career and company structure as well as where you want to go. A good mentee is honest about what they want and about their own strengths and weaknesses. For both sides, consistency matters, along with a relationship that isn't purely transactional. It's different from a therapist or a friend or a parent, because a mentor who has walked a similar path can offer guidance those other people can't.

MB: At 21, did you think you'd be doing what you're doing today?

LC: Absolutely not. At 21 I was an artist raising money for a theater company, trying a lot of different things without knowing this career even existed. I was lucky to keep trying things until a boss told me I was good at something and should turn it into a job. I didn't even know it was a job. Being open to all the different things I was good at is what eventually brought this career together.

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