Cherisse Moe

If teenage Lisa-Marie Brown had it her way and fol­lowed her first love, she would like­ly be an al­ter­na­tive rock mu­sic artiste tour­ing some far-flung cor­ner of the globe, prob­a­bly with an al­bum or two to her name. Grow­ing up in a house­hold filled with the sounds of church choirs and fam­i­ly singers, mu­sic was her en­tire world. By 16, she was the lead singer of the lo­cal al­ter­na­tive band Mor­ris Can Be Con­tact­ed, a quirky name plucked straight from a news­pa­per’s clas­si­fied sec­tion. “It felt like I was liv­ing my dream,” she rem­i­nisces. “I loved be­ing on stage, I loved re­hearsals, and I loved the en­er­gy of cre­at­ing some­thing to­geth­er every week.”

The band on­ly last­ed three years; life had dif­fer­ent plans.

To­day, she is an Op­er­a­tions and Sys­tems Strate­gist and the founder of In­taya, with an ex­pand­ing port­fo­lio ded­i­cat­ed to as­sist­ing cre­ative busi­ness­es in build­ing the in­fra­struc­ture they need to scale. A COSTAATT grad­u­ate and Cer­ti­fied As­so­ciate in Project Man­age­ment, she has worn many hats over the years—from han­dling book­keep­ing for small busi­ness­es like Di­anne’s Tea Shop to sup­port­ing artiste op­er­a­tions for so­ca star Nailah Black­man and serv­ing as a book­ing agent for Free­town Col­lec­tive. This jour­ney, which spans ship­ping lo­gis­tics, tal­ent man­age­ment, and tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion, has led her to ex­act­ly where she’s meant to be: stand­ing as the bridge be­tween cre­ative vi­sion and op­er­a­tional ex­cel­lence.

REC: You ini­tial­ly built your foun­da­tion with Logix Con­sul­tants Lim­it­ed be­fore re­brand­ing to In­taya in 2021. What was the cat­a­lyst for that evo­lu­tion, and how does this new iden­ti­ty bet­ter align with your mis­sion?

LMB: Be­fore tran­si­tion­ing in­to project man­age­ment, my foun­da­tion was in ship­ping and lo­gis­tics. I worked my way up from front desk cus­tomer ser­vice in­to im­port and ex­port doc­u­men­ta­tion, and even­tu­al­ly in­to mar­ket­ing. That ex­pe­ri­ence gave me a strong op­er­a­tional base, but I quick­ly re­alised I want­ed more—some­thing that al­lowed for growth, cre­ativ­i­ty, and im­pact be­yond repet­i­tive sys­tems.

That shift led me to Above Group Ogilvy and even­tu­al­ly in­to tal­ent man­age­ment and cre­ative op­er­a­tions. I be­came known as the per­son who could bring struc­ture to cre­ative en­vi­ron­ments, some­one trust­ed to or­gan­ise, prob­lem-solve, and en­sure de­liv­ery across mov­ing parts. This led to the for­ma­tion of Logix Con­sul­tants Lim­it­ed in 2016, pro­vid­ing busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion and op­er­a­tional sup­port for en­tre­pre­neurs.

I al­so worked close­ly with Prak­tis De­sign Lim­it­ed as Stu­dio Man­ag­er and spent three years in pro­duc­tion with Vis­cuña Broth­ers. These ex­pe­ri­ences shaped a key re­al­i­sa­tion: I don’t op­er­ate sole­ly as a project man­ag­er, nor sole­ly as a cre­ative. My strength lies in build­ing the sys­tems, struc­tures, and op­er­a­tional frame­works that al­low that cre­ativ­i­ty to be ex­e­cut­ed, sus­tained, and scaled. The tran­si­tion to In­taya was a for­mal align­ment with the work I had con­sis­tent­ly been do­ing.

REC: Nav­i­gat­ing the in­ter­sec­tion of cre­ativ­i­ty and in­fra­struc­ture is a niche skill. What sets In­taya apart from the rest in an in­creas­ing­ly crowd­ed mar­ket?

LMB: My work fo­cus­es on help­ing artis­tic en­ter­pris­es and en­tre­pre­neurs move from ideas in­to struc­tured, scal­able ex­e­cu­tion. I typ­i­cal­ly of­fer ser­vices across three core ar­eas: Op­er­a­tions and Sys­tems De­sign, Project and Op­er­a­tions Man­age­ment, and on­go­ing Op­er­a­tions Sup­port and Over­sight.

What dif­fer­en­ti­ates my work is that I un­der­stand how cre­atives think and work, but I al­so build the sys­tems that al­low their ideas to be ex­e­cut­ed, sus­tained, and scaled. My rates are based on the scope of the project and the spe­cif­ic mar­ket, but ul­ti­mate­ly, my work is about build­ing the sys­tems and struc­ture that al­low busi­ness­es to op­er­ate ef­fec­tive­ly and scale with clar­i­ty.

REC: What is it about work­ing with­in cre­ative in­dus­tries that you love so much?

LMB: It al­lows me to be ful­ly my­self. From a young age, I’ve al­ways had a strong sense of in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty, whether it was how I ex­pressed my­self, how I thought, or even how I dressed. I re­mem­ber be­ing told I was “dif­fer­ent,” but I nev­er saw that as a neg­a­tive. It was sim­ply how I showed up.

I grew up around mu­sic; my aunt and un­cle are singers, I was in the church choir, and I be­came the lead singer of a band. But my path in­to this space was shaped through op­por­tu­ni­ty, align­ment, and prepa­ra­tion. Ex­pe­ri­ences like be­ing part of Syn­er­gy Su­per­mod­el, work­ing in pro­duc­tion, and op­er­at­ing both in front of and be­hind the cam­era as a host and pro­duc­er deep­ened that per­spec­tive. They gave me re­al in­sight in­to how cre­ative work is de­vel­oped, ex­e­cut­ed, and ex­pe­ri­enced. And that’s what de­fines the work I do to­day.

REC: Ex­pand­ing in­to the US mar­ket is a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone. What is the strate­gic vi­sion be­hind your ex­pan­sion?

LMB: At a high lev­el, my goal is to build a strong pres­ence for In­taya Busi­ness Sup­port in the US mar­ket, specif­i­cal­ly sup­port­ing cre­ative ven­tures and stu­dios that are scal­ing. I’m fo­cused on build­ing a sus­tain­able, scal­able busi­ness pres­ence, in­clud­ing de­vel­op­ing a team and es­tab­lish­ing long-term client re­la­tion­ships. This is al­so aligned with my long-term vi­sion of op­er­at­ing as a transna­tion­al busi­ness, bridg­ing work across re­gions and sup­port­ing clients across bor­ders.

REC: Your work is clear­ly root­ed in ser­vice; where does this pro­fes­sion­al ethos come from?

LMB: From ear­ly on, I’ve al­ways found my­self in po­si­tions where peo­ple nat­u­ral­ly came to me for sup­port, whether it was to help or­gan­ise some­thing, solve a prob­lem, or bring clar­i­ty to a sit­u­a­tion. Over time, I re­alised that wasn’t by chance.

A big part of that was shaped through my jour­ney across dif­fer­ent in­dus­tries. Be­ing able to sit in var­ied spaces gave me a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of where peo­ple strug­gle and how much of a dif­fer­ence the right sup­port can make. My faith plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in how I see the work that I do. I be­lieve we are all called to op­er­ate in pur­pose, and for me, that pur­pose is root­ed in ser­vice.

REC: We have to know the sto­ry be­hind ‘Mor­ris Can Be Con­tact­ed.’ How did that name come about? What do you re­mem­ber the most about your time with the band?

LMB: That name ac­tu­al­ly came from a re­al­ly fun­ny mo­ment. We were all sit­ting down one day, try­ing to fig­ure out what to call the band, and some­one was flip­ping through the clas­si­fied ads in the news­pa­per. There was a list­ing that said some­thing like, “Mor­ris can be con­tact­ed at…” fol­lowed by a phone num­ber. One of the guys read it out loud, and we all just burst out laugh­ing. Then some­one said, “That’s the name of the band—Mor­ris Can Be Con­tact­ed.” And hon­est­ly, it just stuck.

Those three years were re­al­ly spe­cial. It was ex­cit­ing, it was ex­pres­sive, and it felt like we were build­ing some­thing of our own. We most­ly played with­in the church, so there were bound­aries around where we could per­form, but even with­in that, we had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to record mu­sic, do pho­to­shoots, and re­al­ly de­vel­op as a group. Band prac­tice on Sat­ur­days was some­thing I looked for­ward to; it gave me a sense of pur­pose and be­long­ing. And even though I didn’t con­tin­ue on that path in the same way, that ex­pe­ri­ence stayed with me.

REC: For some­one out there hes­i­tant about fol­low­ing their dreams, what would you tell them?

LMB: I would say, start where you are, and don’t wait for every­thing to be per­fect. A lot of times, hes­i­ta­tion comes from feel­ing like you’re not ready, or that you need to have every­thing fig­ured out be­fore you be­gin. But in my ex­pe­ri­ence, clar­i­ty comes through ac­tion. You don’t al­ways see the full pic­ture at the start; you un­der­stand it as you move.