Influential Woman · Marketing and Branding Consulting
Nicole Miñoza
Founder, Make It Land
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110
I believed there was only one seat at the table for a woman, so another woman's success felt like competition. A leadership program changed that, and the scarcity mindset didn't survive that room.
Nicole Miñoza · In Her Own Words
Her Story
About Nicole
Nicole Miñoza spent 23 years at Adobe building the products that power how creative work actually gets made, most recently as Director of Product Management for Adobe Fonts and Typography, where she grew the platform to more than 12 million monthly active users and led it through the shift to AI-assisted design. That work is what led her to found Make It Land Studio, a positioning and marketing consultancy for founders and executive leaders who are undervalued and ready to be chosen. Her method: find the advantage a business has learned to overlook, make it measurable, and design everything around it until it lands as the reason people choose you.
She brings that same lens to her mentorship work with How Women Lead, where she advises senior women leaders on marketing, branding, and communications.
Rooted in her community on Bainbridge Island, Nicole serves on the board of the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, where she co-chairs the museum's annual fundraising gala, and contributes to arts access and education as a member of the Education Committee for Bainbridge Performing Arts.
More at makeitland.studio/about
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Nicole
01What do you attribute your success to?
Twenty-three years building my professional craft in typography, product, and marketing. My family, who are my compass for everything I do and my biggest supporters. And the sharp, ambitious, and generous women I've surrounded myself with through programs like CHIEF and Women Who Lead.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Karen Catlin taught me this. She was a VP of Engineering at Adobe who mentored me early in my career. Her lesson was simple: no isn't permanent; it's just today's answer. Come back with better evidence, a sharper case, or better timing, and it can change. I've used it every time I had to build the case for something people didn't yet see as worth investing in, typography included.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Get comfortable putting a number on things nobody thinks can be measured. When I started, typography was treated as decoration, something designers cared about, and nobody else took seriously. I built the data to prove it actually mattered, and that data is what let me fund increased investment, grow the team, and move into a director role. So whatever part of your work keeps getting waved off as "nice to have," that's probably where the real value is hiding. Find the number, then lead with it instead of just asking for buy-in.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The AI shift in creative tools. I lived through it directly, leading Adobe's AI product strategy for typography and shipping generative text features in Firefly. AI has collapsed production processes, and almost overnight, the value has shifted from making things to knowing what's worth making. The opportunity belongs to people who've already built real judgment. That's not something AI can manufacture. This is why I left Adobe and launched Make It Land.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Staying true to the work I want to do, the people I want to do it with, and the results I can actually point to. I also believe in staying uncomfortable on purpose. I'd never taken a dance class in my life, and avoided the dance floor for good reason, but earlier this year I decided to commit to one thing every week that was completely outside my comfort zone. A hip-hop dance class is where I landed, and I'm still clearly the least experienced person in the room every time. That's kind of the whole point: growth doesn't happen in the comfortable version of anything.
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