With WORD Creative, Zoila Darton Is Building Space for People of Color
Story written by Yara Simón
Zoila Darton, Founder of WORD Creative / Photo by Monica Henriquez
In 2021, Zoila Darton’s WORD Creative earned more than $1 million in revenue, a 400% increase from the year before.
In the midst of the pandemic, Darton pushed her marketing agency to new heights because of her hustle and determination, collaborations with some of the biggest names in tech and apparel, and her willingness to bet on herself.
Five years ago, the Jewish-Panamanian-Jamaican entrepreneur had only recently moved to Los Angeles from New York City, where she grew up, and worked in the music industry as a marketing director. Passionate about promoting Afro-Caribbean music, she often felt she was swimming upstream, pitching artists that deserved the spotlight but often overlooked the music industry. In 2017, an opportunity arose to represent an Afro-Latina artist in Los Angeles, and Darton was ready to make the musician a household name. However, it didn’t work out.
Burned out by the industry’s inability to move past the status quo, Darton decided to try something new, something that allowed her to directly influence the way big brands worked and portrayed communities of color.
“I was like, ‘I can’t go back to the drawing board anymore. I can’t do this,’” she tells The Mujerista. “I was like, ‘You know what, let me try being on the other side of the business, where I can use my [skills] to empower others.’”
That same year, from her new home base of Los Angeles, she launched WORD Creative, a platform aimed at elevating people of color. “My mission has never been solely to share multicultural stories; it’s just been to share stories through the lens of us,” she adds. “I want to see the rest of the advertising world, the rest of the content storytelling world, the rest of Hollywood to shift into that mindset because multicultural stories are normal stories. It’s family stories. It’s struggle. It’s triumph, joy, and sadness. It’s all these things; it just happens to be through the lens of us.”
This approach has proved successful for Darton, who has worked with influential brands, including HBO, Nike, Converse, and Meta, all while giving people of color the space to tell their authentic stories. Just in 2021, WORD gave a platform to 221 independent and small businesses, 99% of which were people of color or POC-owned small businesses.
What she accomplished in a year may have seemed out of reach at one point in her life. While Darton easily calls herself a “storyteller” now, there was a time in her life when she didn’t consider herself as such. Because she doesn’t have a traditional writing or film background, she didn’t believe she could use that title to describe herself. However, as she works in this space and reflects on her past, she’s come to realize that it’s her ability as a storyteller that has helped propel her career.
“As I’ve reflected on not only the last five years but really my life and my career trajectory, [I] realized that I’ve always just been very hungry to tell stories and help people tell theirs,” she adds. “[I want] to help people find a place where they feel safe. I’m really just looking forward to expanding the ways in which we get to do business with the communities that we get to meet… and work with or share their stories.”
One of the ways Darton hopes to stretch WORD’s reach is by making room for people of color outside of the streetwear industry. While streetwear is important to her and the work WORD does, she wants to see her story and the people around her in other spaces.
“It feels really good to be a part of the storytelling of [streetwear] culture,” Darton says. “Our kids and hopefully our children’s children will get to revisit how we expanded this culture that was really steeped in blackness and in [Latinidad]... that we have created our of necessity. So I’m really excited to expand WORD’s capabilities and the types of partnerships and campaigns that we’re doing to really build this into our community, so it’s kind of like a legacy that our children are born into communities where they feel safe.”
As she builds space where people of color feel welcome, Darton has her eyes set on the TV and movie industries. While she doesn’t know exactly how she’ll reach her goal yet, she hopes to build a TV and film production company.
“I’m not afraid to take up space in that world because I think it is my birthright and yours [to] be a part of history,” she says. “Because our stories, our films, our music, our articles, our photos, that is the register of us. We need to make sure that the future knows that we were here. I don’t know how I’m gonna get there … [but] anybody who’s reading this, holler at me.”
Darton has ambitious goals for the future, including earning more in revenue in 2022 than in 2021. But, while the stakes grow bigger, she has chosen to prioritize herself. She has decided that her business’ growth won’t come at the expense of her health. She also won’t sacrifice time away with her family, particularly her son, Dakota.
A few years ago, Darton found herself negotiating a deal while in labor and partaking in a conference call after her C-section, something that the hustle mentality that is so prevalent in entrepreneurship would praise but that she calls “not a flex.”
She has fought against this by being more careful with her time. On average, Darton works about four to five hours a day, with the rare long night thrown in. Shortening her hours confused her at first because she was still able to accomplish her tasks. In the end, it made her realize that she could add in rest and still be a successful businesswoman.
“We’re consistently asking and wanting more, and you’re never going to be able to rest [like that],” she says. “It’s a lot of that belief that what I need will always present itself, and it’s not going to be dependent on how much I overwork myself.”
