Cliff Notez has already earned a reputation as a brilliant and thoughtful singer and songwriter, having won Best New Artist at the Boston Music Awards in 2018 and just one year later being named Best Musician by “Boston” magazine in its 2019 Best of Boston roundup. He is moreover a visual artist, a budding filmmaker and a producer. He co-founded the Boston-based media production company HipStory that is “dedicated to centering marginalized identities in media through music and film,” and if that weren’t enough, he also teaches songwriting and music-production at Berklee College of Music and marketing at Emerson College.

In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Cliff reveals how being nakedly honest in his art has been a double-edged sword in his leadership journey and why pop icons Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder remain leadership paragons for any artist leader to emulate.