Top 10 Leaders in Art, Craft & Design - 2025

Leading in the arts, crafts, and design sectors requires a unique combination of vision, creativity, and strategic thinking. Leadership in this context is much more than management, as it is the process of inspiring creativity and talent in ways that lead to sustainable practice, preserve cultural heritage, and address the needs of a contemporary capitalist market. Successful leaders successfully operate in complex, creative and industry ecosystems, acting as a bridge between artisans, designers, entrepreneurs, and global markets, while ensuring craftsmanship and artisanship are relevant without compromising authenticity. 

This level of leadership entails a strategic expectation that allows them to identify and leverage affective and contextually relevant trends, market opportunities, and technologies to further contribute to the complexity of artistic production. Furthermore, they establish collaborative networks that help local communities with capacity building and access to wider platforms, working to generate economic and social value. Lastly, they strike a balance between the aesthetic quality of the work as it approaches a commercial model, which emerges as a process of making it accessible to organized processes, that at the same time relates and reconciles audiences, and demonstrates a level of maturity to the ethical and sustainable design process.

"A creative leader inspires, nurtures, and elevates the invisible threads that connect culture, craft, and commerce"

In addition, leadership in the arts and design engages with the vital importance of mentorship and capacity building, creating spaces of possibility for innovation to work in concert with tradition, and requiring a nimbility of decision-making and contribution to a global perspective and cultural specificity, to turn artmaking and design into experiences and products that consolidate meaning.

They point to an integrated approach that privileges strategic planning, operational efficacy, and cultural stewardship collaboratively to shape the future orientation of the creative industries, driving economic growth and cultural welfare, while being mindful of the traditions of craft and design and the legacy they can represent in return. Ultimately, leadership of this kind behoves the work from individual creative practice to systemic engagement, and conversion from individual acts of arts and design to social or global impact, while also considering those arts and design as cultural industries.

CEO Insights in this issue presents a list of ‘Top 10 Leaders in Art, Craft & Design - 2025' who have leveraged their extensive industry expertise and experience in offering effective skills to the market. The following list has been prepared after being closely scrutinized by a distinguished panel of judges including CXOs, analysts and our editorial board. We recognize their valuable contribution to the ever expanding and competitive market and their ability to sustain themselves and emerge as top contestants through their reliable knowledge.