what 35+ years taught us
We've watched platforms rise and fall. We've seen audiences change, industries evolve and new opportunities appear almost overnight.
The fundamentals, however, have never changed. Exceptional careers are built on trust. Great partnerships come from alignment. Sustainable success comes from making decisions with the next ten years in mind, not the next ten weeks.
That's why Avoir exists.
To help exceptional people build careers with genuine longevity, and to help brands build partnerships that are worth the investment.
We've seen what works. And what doesn't.
We've seen what works and what doesn't
Meet Kirsty Williams
Kirsty has spent more than twenty years helping exceptional people build careers, brands and businesses built to last.
She believes real success is never built around one platform, show, book deal or viral moment. It comes from identifying what makes someone genuinely exceptional, then building a business around it that keeps evolving for years.
That belief has shaped every stage of her career, across television, publishing, podcasting, licensing, live events and brand partnerships. She's negotiated thousands of deals with the world's leading Fortune 500 brands, launched products and brands, and helped public figures turn their expertise and influence into businesses with real staying power.
Nineteen of those years were spent at Insanity, one of the UK's leading talent management companies, where she rose from assistant to President and became a shareholder and board member. In 2015, she moved to Los Angeles to co-found the company's US business, helping lead a global team of more than sixty people across two continents.
Scaling a global business gave her a clear view of what mattered most: the work itself, not the size of the operation around it. Founding Avoir let her build a company shaped entirely around that, a close, hands-on, approach focused on helping exceptional people reach their full commercial potential.
Kirsty speaks three languages that rarely exist in one person: talent, brand and business. Where others see a public profile, she sees intellectual property. Where others see today's opportunity, she sees the foundations of a career still thriving a decade from now.
Avoir takes its name from the French verb "to have." Kirsty believes lasting success starts with having something special worth building around, and she’s spent 20 years proving it!.
- 20+ years in talent management
- Former President & Co-Founder, Insanity US
- Built and led a 7-figure division
- Partnerships with Netflix, Amazon, ABC, Sony & Sky
Meet Shelly Tseng
Shelly brings a rare combination of story, strategy, and empathy to every career and campaign. Her expertise is shaped by a 17-year, Emmy-nominated career in entertainment that has honed her instinct for recognizing stories worth telling. This is matched by the business discipline, operational expertise, and data-driven judgment required to turn potential into significant value.
With the talent she represents, she is nurturing and deeply invested, less interested in what they post than in who they are and the legacy they're building. With the brands she partners with, she is hands-on through every stage of a campaign, present long after the contract is signed.
That instinct is what she built her career on. As a producer and executive at Sony Pictures and NBCUniversal, including her work behind shows like The Office and The Real Housewives, she learned that instinct alone never closed a deal; every decision had to be defended in front of a network that measured success in ratings and return, and she spent as much time protecting the brand as she did developing the talent in front of it. Wherever she has worked, the instinct has stayed the same: an eye for who has a story worth telling, and the data to prove it's worth the investment.
One of the first creators Shelly signed as a talent manager had fewer than 24k followers and no paid partnerships, only trade-outs and gifting. She built a strategy around her specifically: who her audience actually was, what they'd respond to, where the growth was hiding. Within months, her following had more than doubled, and the trade-outs and gifting were joined by a steady stream of paid partnership offers.
That's the job as she sees it: not managing what's already working but finding what's possible and building toward it with a plan.
Today, she brings that same instinct to Avoir, where she represents talent navigating the space between traditional entertainment and the creator economy. She stays close to the details, negotiations, creative development, the relationships that open doors, but she is just as comfortable in the numbers: what an audience buys, what a partnership is really worth, what the data says before she ever picks up the phone. Along the way, she has quietly built one of the strongest K-beauty rosters in the country, working with brands across the category and far beyond it.
For Shelly, story and strategy have never been separate disciplines. The best careers, like the best campaigns, are built on both.
- 17+ years as a producer and executive in television, entertainment & casting
- Former Sony Pictures & NBCUniversal executive
- Four consecutive Daytime Emmy nominations
- High-touch, hands-on across strategy, negotiation & creative development
Knowledge shouldn't be gatekept
Beyond client work, Kirsty has built a growing network of women and independent founders across the talent and entertainment industry.
Not because it's a business model, but because she believes the best opportunities often come from people willing to share what they've learned.
mentorship
