Before she was designing the look and style of Billboard magazine, Madeline l. Montoya ’15 was a Greenhill student with a growing passion for creativity. Montoya has turned that passion into a career as she works as the publication’s Creative Director.  

After graduating from Greenhill, Montoya attended Washington University in St. Louis, where her enthusiasm for creative work further intensified.  

“I think I am lucky in some respects that I always kind of knew what I wanted to do,” Montoya said. “I liked other subjects, but I knew by senior year in high school that I was applying to art school.”  

Montoya’s senior superlative was “Most likely to have a show at MoMA,” which relates to her current career.  

“It’s funny seeing a superlative like that because it’s like I guess my passion and what I wanted to do for my career materialized quite early,” Montoya said.  

Montoya’s love for creativity flourished during her time at Greenhill, and one teacher in particular who helped Montoya navigate her passion was Upper School English Teacher Linda Woolley.  

“She had way more interest in her students developing their own sense of creative writing and finding out what English meant to them versus like what her curriculum was about,” Montoya said. 

After Montoya graduated from Greenhill and began college, she was introduced to a variety of career options.  

“I feel like there’s a lot of stuff in the creative world that is so outside the bubble of what we’re taught is an employable profession,” Montoya said.  

Montoya’s love for drawing and art introduced her to many career opportunities, and she worked at different newspapers and magazines before she landed her “dream job” as the Creative Director of Billboard Magazines.   

“I think it’s my dream job because creative director means that you decide the creative vision for a brand, and it’s always been a dream of mine to do that,” Montoya said.  

Although Montoya still has the same passion for creativity as she did in high school, how she views creativity has changed.  

 “I’ve gotten more practical in how I think about being creative, but I also think my eyes have been opened to how many different facets there are to creativity,” Montoya said. “Creativity isn’t just drawing and painting, but it is also playing an instrument, or typography, or whatever else it is that sparks your creativity.”