Hinoti Joshi has always been drawn to how people think. Before advertising became her profession, paying attention was already her way of moving through the world. As a child, she passed Leo Burnett every day on her way to school, watching from the outside as if some part of her already recognised the world behind those doors.
Years later, as Managing Director at VML, leading global Unilever brands from Singapore, that instinct sits at the centre of her work.
The projects that stay with Hinoti are the ones where the work opens up a space for voices that might otherwise go unheard. She is animated by the moments when a campaign does more than meet the ask, when it gives people language, visibility or recognition they did not have before.
Recognising the power of her own voice was a process for Hinoti. She recalls being shy and introverted at the beginning of her career, but she knew instinctively that reshaping her personality to fit the mold would never work. She’s matter-of-fact about her convictions and it’s clear that her confidence in her point of view is rooted deeply to her values.
“Perspective isn’t about having the loudest voice in the room. It’s about daring to see things differently.”
Hinoti had always questioned how women were represented in the media. One standout campaign, Change the Angle, emerged from the observation that women in sport were being photographed differently from men. Women athletes were not always being photographed as sportspeople. Too often, the camera focused on the women’s bodies, shifting attention away from the women’s strength, skill and achievement.
The client and team were initially doubtful. Surely these were power-pictures of athletes. But reviewing the evidence, they found that Hinoti’s instinct was not only right, but already part of a wider conversation. Even the Tokyo Olympics had issued guidance on how not to photograph women athletes by reducing them to their bodies.
The ensuing campaign centered the female gaze. In South Africa, Change the Angle helped influence how a national broadcaster framed women in sport. Hinoti knows when a story has truly connected when it moves people to recognise and change how people see themselves or how they are seen by others.
That same instinct has shaped her work on Lux, a brand that had been built around male admiration. With a client who shared the vision and a creative director she admired, Hinoti steered a shift toward self-love, self-expression and women doing things for themselves, rather than to appear beautiful to others.
The change required more than a strong creative idea. It meant moving a legacy brand away from a familiar narrative, and staying with the direction even when it would have been easier to soften or retreat.
“I remind myself of how I operate by repeating, ‘I don’t compromise,’ to myself whenever I need to hear it.”
People have called her “grace under fire”, and she admits the fire is real. In advertising, she observes, frustration is constant. Client feedback, creative stubbornness, lack of budget, lack of vision. She feels the irritation. She simply chooses not to make it the team’s burden.
That composure is part of a larger decision Hinoti has made about leadership. Too often, she says, women in advertising are expected to be far more aggressive, especially in patriarchal environments. She has felt that expectation, and resisted it.
“I didn’t want to become an alpha person, because that’s not me,” she says.
Instead, she chooses to lead with empathy, integrity and care, both for the work and for the people. A colleague once pointed out that members of her team stay with her for many years. The comment touched her because she had not set out to prove a theory of leadership. She had simply refused to bend to the pressure and ended up building a culture that nurtured curiosity and repelled toxicity.
She sums it up in five radical words: “I like the way I am.”
The statement holds the centre of her story. Hinoti’s authority does not come from volume or performance. It comes from staying true to her values, even in rooms that might reward a different kind of personality.
That is why Hinoti’s advice to women still finding their voice is not to wait for certainty.
“Don’t wait to find your voice. Just speak up. Even one sentence in a meeting can be the beginning. Trust your gut and instincts.”
For Hinoti, voice is not something a woman arrives at fully formed. It evolves as she uses it, tests it and learns to trust what she sees. It is advice that returns to the way Hinoti has moved through the industry.
The women who inspire her are not defined by their title or type of achievement. They’re a collective: women who have stayed true to themselves, done their work with doggedness, lifted other women up, and led with kindness, integrity and empathy.
One more reason that HerMark, a project centred around women lifting women up, appealed to her was that many women are still not fully seen. For Hinoti, making them visible is part of the work.
When asked to imagine her own mark, Hinoti thinks of a continuous line. An unbroken line is intentional, not loud or decorative, but foundational to any form of creation or communication.
It is an image that feels deeply aligned. Much of agency work happens behind the scenes. The influence is not always visible from the outside, but it is there in the thinking, the relationships, the standards held over time, and the ideas protected until they are ready to enter the world.
From a shy young woman drawn to the inner lives of people to a leader known for grace under fire, Hinoti has built a career on trusting instinct, refusing to compromise, and proving that power does not always need to be loud to be unmistakably present.
HerMark is a visual and narrative study of women shaping the marketing, advertising, and communications industry. Branding in Asia is publishing the ongoing series in partnership with HerMark.
Learn more at hermark.world. You can read more interviews from the series here.
