My name is Gaëtan Uytterhaegen and I changed my name to get a job in advertising

I started pretending Gate Lambert was my name 15 years ago because when I finished ad school, I emailed my portfolio to dozens of creative directors, asking if I could meet them for a chat, get some feedback, possibly beg for a placement, etc. – a ’crit’, as it is sometimes still called. But I wasn’t getting any replies.

Not wanting to give up, I kept working on my portfolio and emailing people. A couple of months later, I went to an event run by the advertising and media charity NABS, where a creative director was offering portfolio reviews to anyone. When my turn came, he said I had a great portfolio, and his only advice to me was something I could never have expected: it wasn’t to change anything about my work; it was to change my name.

“No agency in London wants to hire someone with a name they can’t put in The Drum, let alone pronounce.”

"Change my name?! To what? John f*cking Smith? This can’t be right…"

Guess what...

After getting over the initial disbelief, I thought I’d give it a go. I picked a surname that sounded more English (and used an anglicized spelling of my nickname), created a new email address – ‘gate.lambert@gmail.com’ – and then sent the exact same portfolio to the exact same email addresses. This time, every single one of them replied.

What’s funny is that nowadays, I would flat-out refuse to work with anyone who showed xenophobic traits. But at the time, I was just so excited to get the replies. I didn’t even think about the awful truth staring me in the face. So what did I do? I kept the name and I went to all the crits.

Scrabble score!

Now, every campaign I’ve worked on, every award I’ve won, every talk I’ve given… all have a made-up name on them.

Fortunately, times have changed (a little) in the past 15 years. And, importantly, I feel blessed to work at an agency that is open-minded enough to see that it’s completely possible to be called anything from Akkineni to Zhang and still be a native or native-level English speaker, writer, creator… anything!

I want to give a shout-out to everyone brave enough to keep their Scrabble-winning names (Uytterhaegen, on a triple, would score 57). I hope my story helps you remember that the next time a CV with an unusual name lands in your inbox, that behind that odd combination of letters could be your next award-winning team member.