I started The Study because I had nothing to do.
It was the end of my bachelor’s, the start of the pandemic, and the first time in years that the world (and my brain) went quiet. I was stuck at home with too much time, too many thoughts, and not enough direction. I had done everything right: studied hard, collected the diplomas, kept satisfying the corporate world. And then suddenly, there was nowhere left to go. No next step, no structure, just the sound of my own thoughts.
Laurent, one of my dear friends from HEC told me I should start writing. He said I had too many opinions to keep to myself. So I did. I started a blog. With no strategy, no logo, no goal beyond expression. I just wanted to think out loud. I wrote about crypto, Web3, data, and how marketing keeps confusing attention with understanding.
A few months later, someone at Cossette read one of my posts and reached out. We met for a virtual coffee. We talked about data, meaning, and how brands could sound human again. By the end of the conversation, they offered me a job to become the agency’s first data scientist in Canada.
I said yes. I was twenty-two, terrified, but somehow completely sure I’d figure it out.
Cossette was my first crash course in the real world of advertising. I learned how campaigns are built, sold, defended, and sometimes destroyed. I learned to make numbers fell emotional, to tell stories through evidence, and to stay calm when everything needed to be redone “by EOD.” It was exhilarating and exhausting. I loved the work and the people but hated how easily meaning got lost in the process.
The turning point came when I worked on the marketing for Charlotte Cardin’s 99 Nights rollout and tour. That project cracked something open in me. It was the first time I saw how precision, emotion, and storytelling could live together in perfect harmony. Every decision felt like it was art disguised as marketing.
Somewhere between those late nights and long calls, I realized I didn’t just want to analyze culture — I wanted to shape it. I wanted to build something that lived in that in-between space, where data and intuition could finally coexist.
That’s when The Study stopped being an idea and became a decision.
I left Cossette in December 2023 with no backup plan, no investors, and no guarantees. Just instinct, conviction, and a few too many open tabs. I didn’t want to start an “agency.” I wanted to build a space where intelligence could feel human again. Where strategy told stories, and curiosity was the compass.
The pandemic didn’t make that easier, but it made it possible. The world was quiet enough that I could finally listen. I worked from my room at my parents’, figuring things out as I went : reading, researching, writing, and convincing myself this was “real work.” They didn’t totally get what I was doing, but they didn’t stop me either. They just kept praying for me and asking if I’d eaten. And to be quite honest, that’s all I needed.
So somehow, The Study found its rhythm. And five years later, it’s still here — and so am I.
The Study has followed me through every version of myself: the student, the strategist, the builder, the exhausted optimist, the woman learning what entrepreneurship really means. It has traveled with me through Montréal winters and Dakar summers, through airports, deadlines, and heartbreaks. It’s become a mirror for every question I’ve ever had about culture, meaning, and resilience.
I’ve learned that building something doesn’t require certainty. It requires endurance, humility, and the ability to keep showing up, especially when you don’t know what’s next.
Today, The Study is part agency, part studio, part research lab, and part school. It’s the space where structure meets soul, where insights are emotional, and where we study culture not to predict it but to understand it. It’s a practice. It’s also a promise — that curiosity is still worth protecting.
I’ve learned everything from the people who’ve walked alongside me. My mom taught me that leadership is just kindness with boundaries. My dad taught me that stability is also a form of love — that taking care of things quietly counts too. My sister Anta Baba reminds me what lightness looks like, and that it’s okay to laugh in the middle of chaos. Racky taught me that taste isn’t aesthetic, it’s awareness, knowing how to see before anyone else does. Jen, our art director, has been there since day one, turning half-sentences into full worlds. My friends remind me that rest is part of the work.
I still don’t know what The Study is, not entirely. It changes too often to name. It’s not really a company yet (even though it’s technically been for 5 years now). It’s a lens, a rhythm, a way of thinking. It’s my longest conversation with the world… and it’s still going.
You don’t have to understand something to build it. You just have to care enough to keep going.
Merci to everyone who’s ever read, shared, doubted, challenged, or believed. you built this with me.
So inspiring🩷